It is now widely thought that the world economy has left behind the industrial age and is moving into a new age of knowledge work in the information society. This global pattern of change is said to require new forms of organization and different ways of managing them. Many argue for a move away from bureaucratic, hierarchical forms of organizing and extol the virtues of more flexible, flatter, leaner structures modeled on networks in which authority, responsibility and decision-making are decentralized and distributed. Attention is drawn to the very different ways in which professional knowledge workers must be managed, compared to the manual workers of the industrial age. It is said that knowledge workers must be empowered so that they can participate more fully in the development of the organization. It is supposed that this will unleash the creativity of the organization.