American Chainsaw Massacre : MEAN BUSINESS: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great.<i> By Albert J. Dunlap with Bob Andelman (Times Books/Random House: $25, 289 pp.)</i>

Boss: Knock-knock.

Worker: Who’s there?

Boss: Not you anymore.

--A “Dilbert” cartoon

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The American economy is 12% more productive than it was in 1990, adjusted for inflation. Eight workers are doing the work of nine. The ceaseless belt-tightening by corporate executives has triumphed. Finally, you figure, relief should be in sight--”rightsizing” and its hoary euphemisms should end. For a decade and a half we have ridden this bus, hellbent for the intersection of Productivity and Prosperity, and yet the two roads never seem to cross. It should be time.

Knock, knock.

It’s Albert Dunlap.

He’s here to tell you that it’s not time yet. He’s here to tell you that no matter how hard you work, you’re still at risk. He’s here to tell you, dear worker, that he’s going to cut 30% of your work force--for your own good. He’s here to tell you, dear CEO, how to do the dirty, unpleasant work of salvaging an unproductive company.

Al Dunlap is what Frank Sinatra would have been if God had stolen back half an octave: Up from the streets of Hoboken, N.J., tough-minded, proud of the hate he attracts, convinced it’s a tribute to his audacity. Hate him or love him--and there is considerable reason for both--he personifies the particularly American conviction that individuals, not collective systems, solve problems. If you want a book that shows you all the colorful contradictions of late 20th century capitalism, you’ve come to the right place.

That wasn’t the book Dunlap and collaborator Bob Andelman meant to write. This was supposed to be the take-no-prisoners saga of a poor boy who went to West Point and emerged as a lifeguard pulling drowning companies out of the water, administering a tough-love shot of adrenaline and then moving on--with a pocketful of cash.

Time and again, “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap has resuscitated weakened companies with a litany of bully-boy tactics that make up the guts of this book. In 1995 he rode into Scott Paper Co. as chairman and CEO and cut one-third of the 11,200-person work force, axing a far higher proportion of managers than hourly workers. Obsessed with strengthening Scott’s “core” tissue, paper towel and napkin business, he sold off a host of other businesses and ran the stock value up $6 billion. He made a $100-million profit on his own Scott stock when the company merged with Kimberly-Clark last December.

Dunlap imagines himself a distinctive figure, not merely slashing and burning assets as profit-hungry executives did in the ‘80s, but strategically selling assets to reinvest in a corporation’s core--the original purpose that became subverted by mindless acquisition of subsidiaries. In July, when Sunbeam Corp. hired him to perform the same magic, investors salivated: Sunbeam stock skyrocketed to $19.50 a share from $12.25 in one day.

Want to do the same thing with your corporation, dear CEO, before the board of directors kicks you out and brings in Chainsaw Al for a year or two? “Mean Business” is jammed with cliches to show you the way: Get the right management team. Pinch pennies. Know what business you’re in. Get a real strategy. Fire all the consultants. “Outsource” like hell, replacing full-time departments with outside contractors. And remember that the most important person in your company is not the chairman or the board of directors but the stockholder. (Don’t spend much time looking for the importance of rank-and-file workers; they are largely taken for granted.)

Give Dunlap his due: He rails at executives who boast about how many tons of product they’ve sold without knowing their profit margin. He rages against MBAs, corporate perks, buzzwords and guys who waver. (When Robert Allen backed off on his original layoff plans at AT&T;, Dunlap sneers, he “wrinkled like a cheap suit.”)

You wanna know why I’m this way? the author asks in an affecting autobiographical section. Because he grew up hard, in a bedroom so small he was constantly bruising his knees. (The son of a union steward, he accepts unions in his workplaces and recognizes that the days of busting them are gone.)

Dunlap is part of the survivalist branch of American business that is convinced we have to shrink the village in order to save it--execs who expect workers to thank them for firing 30% of the plant because otherwise the other 70% will eventually disappear under poor management. Once the company is downsized, survivalists admonish the remaining workers to become more “innovative.” But workers don’t innovate for a company unless they have a stake in it, and not merely a financial stake. To innovate means to create, to put your heart into your work. It means to believe there is a future in what you do.

That feeling is why we believe it’s worth putting a memo in the suggestion box, or staying three hours later than we have to, or coming in for an extra late shift on Saturday. You can buy a worker’s labor or frighten it out of him. But innovation--the ideas that make business more productive--have a higher, deeper, more mysterious price. The price is called commitment, and it’s a price Al Dunlap does not believe in paying because he never sticks around.

“I’m a superstar in my field,” Chainsaw Al proclaims here, “much like Michael Jordan in basketball and Bruce Springsteen in rock ‘n’ roll.” When I read that, I thought about something Springsteen said from the stage one night at the L.A. Sports Arena in 1984. Buckets had been set up outside to collect contributions to laid-off Southland industrial workers, the kind of workers Dunlap lays off as a casualty of mean business.

Toward the end of the night, Springsteen introduced a stark song called “Point Blank,” imploring the crowd: “Don’t lose the best part of yourself.” This book is a testament to what you become when you ignore that warning.