MAVERICK: THE SUCCESS STORY BEHIND THE WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL WORKPLACE

Abstract

Ricardo Semler inherited his family company, Semco - manufacturer of marine pumps, industrial dishwashers and mixing equipment - when he was 19. Soon, by 1980, it was on the brink of bankruptcy, but a decade later, during a period of savage recession in Brazil, it had been transformed into a rapidly-growing company with profits of 10% on sales of $37 million. This was achieved by throwing out the rule-book and getting rid of all manuals and written procedures. Workers make the decisions previously made by their bosses; assembly workers can come and go as they please, and set their own production schedules; corporate decisions are put to the vote; managerial staff set their own salaries and bonuses; everyone has access to the company books; and there is a minimum of meetings, memos and approvals. All this was achieved through a series of 30 programmes designed to change the entire working environment, and in this book Semler presents an account of his company's revolution.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 152 citations exist upstream.