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Purpose and benefits

Kanter is best known for her work on empowerment and the ‘post-entrepreneurial’ firm. She began her career as a sociologist and her sociological interests are evident in her first book, "Men and Women of the Corporation " , which examines the distribution of power and powerlessness within a large bureaucratic organisation.

Her findings suggested that it was the structure of the organisation that kept many people powerless, rather than an intrinsic inability or unwillingness to wield power. Out of this grew her later concern with the empowerment of employees and the management of change. Successful post-entrepreneurial firms, she suggests, will be those that can innovate and manage change, offer wider access to power, keep open communications channels, and adopt an integrative rather than a compartmentalising approach.