Peters and Waterman made an important contribution to the understanding of how large, successful organisations are managed, unfortunately, some of the organisations defined as excellent have subsequently experienced severe operating difficulties. Thus, for example, only two years after publication of the book, the magazine Business Week re-examined the companies against the original criteria used by Peters and Waterman and found that fourteen of the forty-three no longer matched up to the yardstick of ‘excellence’. This merely illustrates the temporary nature of organisational success.