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'Welcome to the new [knowledge] economy - a world where the rate of change is so fast that it is only a blur? Where the clear lines between seller and buyer, service from product, employee from entrepreneur are rapidly disappearing. You are entering a world where change is a constant and it may be argued that knowledge and imagination are more valuable than physical capital.'

вЂ" S. Davis and C. Meyer, Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998)

Davis and Meyer clearly depict the new reality for the information age вЂ"- future prosperity will be based on intellectual capital, the information in people's minds, rather than physical capital or the material resources within a country. Underpinning the growth of the new knowledge-based economies will be the accelerated globalisation of the marketplace, a geometric growth in communication technologies and related connectivity, and the rapidly increasing speed of scientific and technological advances.

One thing is certain: such tectonic changes will and do place enormous pressures on all managers striving to be effective in the new workplace environment. However, while the challenges are vast, the environment is exciting. Firstly, global competition is now the new economic reality, which translates into a cultural revolution in management. It can now be said that business is international business. To be effective within the global marketplace, managers must understand the importance of cross-cultural managerial practices and respond effectively to the demands of culturally diverse workforces. Given these imperatives, the most effective managers of this decade and beyond will be those who successfully adapt within the cultural context in which they manage. The management of people in diverse workforces and in different countries is an important theme in this book, because the business world is now experiencing an important shift from parochial to international managerial practices.

Secondly, the knowledge-based workplace of the twenty-first century demands that managers design and create more effective and efficient workplaces and organisational structures. A second theme in the book explores these landscape adaptations. As a result of the information revolution, for example, industrial organisations such as car manufacturing giant The Ford Motor Company, complete with blue-collar factory workforces, are being replaced at a phenomenal rate by information organisations such as the giant software company Microsoft and their white-collar, knowledge workers. The Henry Fords of the old organisational world have handed over to the Bill Gates of the new world. The emerging information organisations are quite different from their predecessors. Typically, they are smaller and smarter; they have core, peripheral and outsourced staff; their keys to success are information and knowledge; their organisational structures are fluid and organic to make them more responsive to necessary changes; hierarchies are minimised; and expert teams of employees solve problems and make decisions. Moreover, the place of work is rapidly changing. In the 1980s international companies typically had offices strategically located in the major capital cities of the world, and business executives spent considerable time commuting. Many of these corporate edifices are no longer needed, because the Internet and videoconferencing are fast communication facilities and because so many people telecommute for at least part of the working week.

Other chapters in this book focus on the changes taking place at the individual level, noting issues relating to the centrality of work across cultures and the design of jobs, along with their effects on motivation and, ultimately, organisational