This volume offers a unique approach to understanding and managing today's organizations as they are governed by mathematical and scientific systems that underly evolutionary biology. This opens the prospect of managing by an organizational model that incorporates those same systems and principles, and gives us a powerful new way to view both the organization and the market it serves. The Ven Matrix Architecture is the newest systems approach to seeing the terrain of a system and its marketplace. All this is in a five dimension economy, a digital internetworked, trans-planetary system of competing markets that mimics the behavior of a globally extended bacterial colony. Were it not for the author's impeccable credentials one might raise an eyebrow at all this, but Venerable has the academic background and practical corporate experience to make us take what he says seriously. The result is a fascinating work for executives throughout the organization and for their academic colleagues.

The essence of Venerable's argument is that the evolution of a five dimension economy--the sort of economy we have now--is driven by a collective group consciousness, made up of the world's producers, consumers, and their governments. Venerable takes a view parallel to this in looking at organizations. He calls it the Ven Matrix of a system and describes it as an interactive paradigm for dealing with the change and uncertainty inherent in any five dimension economy. Moreover, by modeling the organization as a living system, one can dramatically improve one's competitive position. Such a model, combined with the Ven Matrix systems approach explained here, enables us to see the entire terrain in which our organizations function but with a third dimension, depth added to the others. Among the special features of this book is an expression of deeply abstract issues in a language and style that will be readily accessible to most college graduates. Well illustrated with figures, tables, and explanatory diagrams, the book also provides readers with a Ven Matrix worksheet to copy and use in the course of doing quick assessments of the condition and needs of any organization, department, or project.

G. D. VENERABLE is Dean of Faculty at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia./e Dr. Venerable has taught at colleges and universities throughout the California higher education system, and has served on the research staff of the Argonne National Laboratory. He has published in fields ranging from chemistry to the systems theory of organizations and is President and CEO of Ventek Software, Inc., providing organizational management and database design services for corporations and educational institutions. Among his various positions in the private sector, Dr. Venerable was Executive Vice President of Omnitrom Associates

consultant to Banks Brown Inc. where he developed the QUASAR Model of Corporate Organization, Diversity, and Chagne

d Principal Quality Educator and Management Strategist, Motorola Computer Systems.