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Library Journal Review

Helgesen (The Female Advantage, Doubleday, 1990) has written a readable work on corporate structures. Using the popular analogy of the web, she describes shifts in the reporting lines of organizations as diverse as Intel and the Miami Herald. A former journalist herself, Helgesen writes about web structures that were developed to meet specific needs or to save a troubled company. As defined here, the "web of inclusion" seeks to draw in all people in an organization despite salary or rank, often centering on people with power beyond their position in the company. The goal is to forge a stronger yet more flexible workforce. Despite the fuzziness of the concept, Helgesen successfully presents the stories of the organizations she surveyed in the words of their employees. Her book is one of the better accounts of the frontline-oriented, bottom-up management style that is slowly but surely gaining favor in corporate America. Recommended for all public and academic business collections.‘Randy Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Libs., Ind. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Helgesen (The Female Advantage) here describes a developing ``collegial'' business structure for the information age, one in which the responsibilities and opportunities of all company ranks are flexible and even invite customer participation in product development. This principle of ``inclusion,'' the author shows, enabled Intel, for example, in a marketing first, to promote its brand name and a new microchip component direct to PC consumer/users through the retail advertising of Intel's existing computer-building customers. Other companies featured in this engrossing study of New Age corporate relationships are the Miami Herald (``be completely open with your staff''); Boston's Beth Israel Hospital (info-technology puts power at the hands-on level); Anixter, ``delivering mass-produced goods and services... on a tailorized basis'') and the Nickelodeon cable TV network, which solved a reverse-inclusion cultural problem. Business and technical subjects often entail specialized languages daunting to the general reader, but in this important area of modern communications and work relations, Helgesen has got it exactly right. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Journalist Helgesen uses the metaphor of a spider's interweavings to symbolize what should be the new corporate structure. The web becomes not so much a sign of the information superhighway as it does an icon of a seamless, nonhierarchical, communications-oriented organization. This fluidity, she contends, is best equipped to handle the millennium's top five issues: diversity, marketing, employee empowerment, training, and strategic alliances. Her proof is offered in rather lengthy studies of five companies each of which excels in handling one of the five challenges: diversity (the Miami Herald), marketing (Intel), employee empowerment (Beth Israel Hospital in Boston), training (Anixter), and strategic alliances (Nickelodeon). From the details of each, it's obvious that Helgesen was allowed much internal access and leeway in order to instruct, inform, and, perhaps, subtly promote. A new framework, skillfully presented, for not-so-new business problems. --Barbara Jacobs