The whole movement, read and linked.

Harvard Business Review · Ricardo Semler

Semler's third HBR article; the page also references 'Managing Without Managers' (1989) and 'Why My Former Employees Still Work for Me' (1994).

RAE eletrônica (SciELO) · RAE author

Academic analysis of how Semler's ideas and 'participation' were diffused and reframed in Brazil in the 1980s.

Peerdom (blog) · Peerdom

2026 explainer on Semco's growth from $4M to $212M with self-set salaries and hours.

ManageMagazine · ManageMagazine

Full transcript of the TED talk incl. the Japanese Semlerist group and the Dutch network of 600 companies.

TED · Ricardo Semler

The TED talk on radical corporate democracy, work-life balance and schools designed for wisdom.

TED · TED

Speaker bio: organisations that function without their founder; designing for wisdom.

LinkedIn Pulse · Alan Newton

Commentary on the talk's core idea of designing companies and society for wisdom.

Wikipedia · —

Reference bio: firing 60% of top managers on day one, matrix failure of 1986, Maverick.

Scribd · Student case

Portuguese-language student case on Semco's participative model.

Corporate Rebels · Corporate Rebels

Programme page for the 2026 summit on new ways of working; useful as a 'conference results' anchor after the event.

Harvard Business Review · Ricardo Semler

The 1989 original: 800 employees set their own hours, see the books and vote on decisions; 150+ managers set their own pay. Three principles — democracy, profit sharing, information.

Harvard Business Review · Ricardo Semler

Purchasable reprint with abstract.

Harvard Business Review (via donnapace.com) · Ricardo Semler

Open PDF of reprint 89509 incl. the self-set salary and self-titled 'coordinator' passages.

Harvard Business Review · Ricardo Semler

1994 HBR piece on turning employees into satellite suppliers instead of laying them off.

Thunderbird School of Global Management · Thunderbird case writers

Teaching case: one-third of middle managers quit 1985–87 as self-managed teams arrived; six-month unit mandates.

Academia.edu · Academic author

Paper synthesising Maverick, The Seven-Day Weekend and both HBR articles; 12 layers to 3, corporate staff cut 75%.

Harvard Business Review · HBR

HBR index page: Semler's 'go to the movies on Sunday' remark, the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge winners, and a Semco teaching case.

MT/Sprout · MT/Sprout

Dutch business magazine on how the Semco Style Institute partnership began; notes Semler's MT interview is among the site's most-read.

Trabajar es una lata (Substack) · Substack author

Spanish reading of Maverick as the classic post-bureaucratic case.

Exame · Exame

Semler's own contemporaneous verdict on the dot-com crash: greed, vanity and a basic misreading of economic reality, not just bad luck.

Exame · Exame

2021 interview: an ABN Amro branch that fired 392 of 420 managers on Semco Style advice, and an update on Lumiar and the still-unwritten next book.

Trade (revista corporativa) · Trade

Semler on the shrinking Semco group (5,000 employees across five or six firms) and Semco Style's export to the Netherlands and, more recently, Japan.

Best of Web Brasil · Best of Web

Retrospective on Semler's practices — self-managed teams, chosen leaders, no fixed bosses — and his line that 'freedom demands more discipline than control'.

NPR — TED Radio Hour · Guy Raz

Extended NPR treatment with transcript, expanding on the pyramid hierarchy Semler inherited from his father and calling it similar to a boarding school's rules.

PeopleLab · PeopleLab

UK HR platform's write-up framing the talk around the question 'What if your job didn't control your life?'

The Tim Ferriss Show (via Goodreads show notes) · Tim Ferriss

Long-form interview on Semler's background — refugee mother, a failing business inherited young — with show notes linking to his own podcast, LeadWise.

strategy+business (PwC) · strategy+business

Leadership scholar Warren Bennis calls Semco's employee-elected officers 'the most advanced, progressive, and... problematic' form of participative management he knows of.