Small is Beautiful – Book Summary
Small is Beautiful is the original title of the book written in 1973 by Ernst Fritz Shumacher, in which he defended the production in small scale, contradicting the business mentality prevailing at the time and based on the company’s gigantism. Despite quickly becoming a surprisingly bestseller, only 20 years later the ideas defended by Shumacher began to have indeed effective translation, becoming the title of the book a management maximal. The worldwide sales of this book reached 4 million copies.
Shumacher’s book also had a strong impact out of the management area, becoming a true ecology bible, with several appeals to the social conscience. Persuading the western countries to not introduce technologies which consumed fuels in the poor nations, favored solutions more adapted to these countries’ reality, like for example the use of bulls instead of tractors, employment suppressors.
