Imagine a company where people love coming to work and are highly productive on a daily basis. Imagine a company whose top executives in a quest to create the most fun workplace ever obliterate labormanagement divisions and push decisionmaking responsibility down to the plant floor. Could such a company compete in todays bottomline corporate world Could it even turn a profit Well imagine no more.In Joy at Work Dennis W. Bakke tells the true story of this extraordinary companyand how as its cofounder and longtime CEO he challenged the business establishment with revolutionary ideas that could remake Americas organizations. It is the story of AES whose business model and operating ethos lets have funwere conceived during a 90minute car ride from Annapolis Maryland to Washington D.C. In the next two decades it became a worldwide energy giant with 40000 employees in 31 countries and revenues of 8.6 billion. Its a remarkable tale told by a remarkable man Bakke a farm boy who was shaped by his religious faith his years at Harvard Business School and his experience working for the Federal Energy Administration. He rejects workplace drudgery as a noxious remnant of the Industrial Revolution. He believes work should be fun and at AES he set out to prove it could be. Bakke sought not the empty fun of the Friday beer blast but the joy of a workplace where every person from custodian to CEO has the power to use his or her Godgiven talents free of needless corporate bureaucracy.In Joy at Work Bakke tells how he helped create a company where every decision made at the top was lamented as a lost chance to delegate responsibilityand where all employees were encouraged to take the gamewinning shot even when it wasnt a slamdunk. Perhaps Bakkes most radical stand was his struggle to break the stranglehold of creating shareholder value on the corporate mindset and replace it with more timeless valuesamp160integrity fairness social responsibility and a sense of fun.