Corporate Life Cycles and the Evolution of Management — Part II

The first part of the article posited a segmentation of corporate life cycles into four stages: birth, youth, maturity and resurrection. A review of the characteristics of each of the corporate life stages indicated that the role of management and the planning and control systems are quite different in each stage. Part one concluded with the observation that the personality of the key top manager must fit the particular corporate stage of development, since the manager has the greatest internal influence on the organisation.