Russell Ackoff is a very special management thinker. As an architect, city planner, doctor of philosophy, behavioral scientist, trailblazer in the fields of organizational, operations, and systems theory, bestselling author, distinguished Wharton School professor, and head of his own management education and consulting firm, he qualifies, as do few others in this century, for the title of "Renaissance Man." Fortunately, he makes up for this grievous shortcoming by also being an outrageously funny observer of homo commercium. Now, Ackoff's Best offers you an opportunity to become acquainted with this irreverent genius who, over the past forty years, has done so much to shape our understanding of the modern business organization.

From: http://www.f-laws.com/

f-LAWS are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.

In 1958, Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson first articulated Parkinson's Law, which states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". His law and the accompanying book was based on his extensive experience in the British Civil Service and on his own scientific observations.

Almost 50 years later, Professor Russell Ackoff, renowned American management guru and systems thinker, has compiled over 80 new laws in the same vein. Based on a lifetime's experience in public and private sector organizations, these f-LAWS (or laws as flaws) are designed to whet your appetite and get you thinking about the often-unacknowledged realities of organizations: what really motivates managers, why are companies run the way they are, how come they don't work better...?

We've also asked British author, Sally Bibb, to respond in the light of current organizational thinking and best practice. Her thoughts introduce a voice from another generation, another gender and another continent.