How social media and social movements can help your organisation to be more like people
Cover art by Steve Lafler
Now available!
Change how we organise. Change the world.
There are lessons emerging all around us, in the new social movements that have swept the globe, and in the organising patterns found on social media.
Could Twitter and Occupy help our NGOs, charities, trade unions and voluntary organisations to both stay relevant in the times ahead and live our values through the ways that we organise?
‘Anarchists in the Boardroom’ is a journey through worker-run factories, Occupy encampments, a spattering of non-violent direct actions and even a few forward-thinking companies, to make the case for helping our organisations ‘to be more like people.’ It asks us to brush away our ‘professional’ assumptions and interact as we do when we don’t have job descriptions or business plans telling us how to change the world. It reminds us of the power each of us has to make change happen, even within the most entrenched of bureaucracies!
Order your print or e-book now
In the UK/Europe? Order from Active Distribution
In Canada? Order from Brunswick Books
In the US? Order from AK Press
Buy the ebook version below and choose your price
£8 is the suggested price, but anything over £1 will get you a copy of the ebook.
What others are saying about the book…
“Anarchists in the Boardroom is a disturbing book in so many ways. All of them good. It challenges us to rethink the dinosaur assumptions on which most of our organisations are built. It opens our minds to fresh and creative possibilities for treating ourselves and colleagues with trust and compassion. Above all, it places the qualities of being human at the heart of our endeavours, putting a better world within the reach of us all. A vade mecum for life!”
– Roger Clark, former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada
“We all crave meaning, agency and fulfilment at work. Too often we experience the very opposite; the idealism that drove us evaporates into disillusionment and boredom. If this is you, read this book! It’s an inspiring and above all highly practical guide to how to change your workplace for the better. Thank you, Liam, for showing us the way.”
– Carne Ross, former senior UK diplomat to the UN, Author of The Leaderless Revolution and Occupy Wall Street activist
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked to speak on panels organized by NGO managers asking ‘What can we learn from the success of Occupy/UKUNCUT/Climate Camp/the latest grassroots movement hitting the headlines.’ I tend to decline, politely responding that I don’t think hierarchical organisations are able to do so. Since reading this book though, I will adopt a new approach and recommend Anarchists in the Boardroom instead. This book deserves to be passed around like contraband by charity workers committed to making their organisations part of – rather than simply observers of – transformational social change.”
– Tim Gee, Author of You Can’t Evict an Idea and Counterpower
“Anarchists in the Boardroom is a powerful contribution to the growing chorus of voices calling for a new way of leading and managing our organizations. And Barrington-Bush goes beyond the boundaries of traditional management scholarship, drawing some critically important lessons from overlooked sources like the Occupy Movement and hip-hop music, and applying them in refreshingly practical ways to the real challenges we face in creating organizational cultures that work in the 21st century.”
– Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter, Co-Authors of Humanize: How people-centric organizations succeed in a social world
