Biblio
Printer-friendly version
] Filters: Term is Business [Clear All Filters]
(1989). Creative Organization Theory.
"As we all know, bureaucracies are supposed to operate 'by the rules.' They are places where individual initiative, enterprise, and creativity are supposed to take second place—if they are permitted at all!—to the policies and procedures that have been defined or authorized by those in charge of the organization as a whole.
Weber observed that the bureaucratic approach to organization mechanized the process of administration, exactly as machines had routinized production in industry. And his writings make frequent reference to how this process of mechanization squeezes out the human dimension." (p. 49)
(2002). Creating Sustainable Work Systems.
If one is to believe history, intensity of work has been a central issue in management science ever since the start of industrialization and a problematic one at that, as it captures the essence of the antagonism between the person who does the work and the person who wants it done; sometimes formulated as a conflict between capital and labour, inherent in the capitalistic industrial system. This perspective does not indicate many remedies apart from a proletarian revolution—still there would be conflicting interest." (p. 15)
(2006). CrazyBusy : overstretched, overbooked, and about to snap : strategies for coping in a world gone ADD.
"Our task now is to learn how to use the technology we've invented, rather than allow it to use us, so that it improves our human connections, and does not replace them."
(1993). Crazy Bosses: Spotting Them, Serving Them, Surviving Them.
"Today, American workers exist in the most primitive form of group, one that is tradition-free and free of loyalty. Such an environment generates tremendous fear in people, fear of loss, of death, of dissolution and shame. Fear that drives people together. Fear that keeps people apart. It is a fear produced by the incessant demand for short-term results and the feeling of danger supplied by a variety of villians. And it is not irrational. It is real. It is sane." (p. 94)
(1991). The Corporate Negaholic: How to Deal Successfully With Negative Colleagues, Managers and Corporations.
"The alternative action was to look at the inequities and the resentments and find solutions which would create a win-win outcome. Unless everyone wins, no one really wins." (p. 91)
(1994). Coping with Difficult Bosses.
"There are certainly times when honest spontaneity is the key to improved human relationships, but while you are being harpooned by a hostile boss is not one of those times. It is then you need to do what actors do—communicate emotions you do not feel." (p. 20)
(2003). Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You.
"Other people's definitions of us are not just absurd—if unchallenged, they erect prison walls around us. As they rise higher, the light of awareness fades. The world darkens. We lose freedom, safety, confidence, conviction, and sometimes ourselves." (p. 77)
(1978). Control your depression.
"Psychological prevention is a much neglected area. There is so much need for giving services to people who are hurting that we do not take the time to prepare those who are not hurting to live life in effective ways. If we did, we might be able to prevent many from becoming casualties. The savings in therapy time and money—not to mention human suffering—could be enormous. Perhaps some day 'psychological impact statements' will be as familiar to our ears as 'environmental impact statements.'"
(1988). The Constraints of Corporate Tradition: Doing the Correct Thing Not Just What the Past Dictates.
But when boosting productivity comes to mean in practice nothing more than an efficiency-driven effort to cut costs and do better with line workers what is now being done, we can watch the coral build up before our very eyes. In an earlier environment, the link between old-fashioned, direct labor-based productivity and competitive strength was obvious and immediate. Today, that linkage is more complicated and less certain. Doing the right things is every bit as important as doing things right. Time was, we could think of direct-labor productivity as a pretty fair approximation of competitiveness and be confident we were on the mark. No longer. The proxy does not hold. Forgetful that it was—and is—but a proxy that holds for some circumstances but not all, many of today's managers treat as a living fact what is no more than the hard shell of past experience.
So it is with most of the maps by which managers steer. What was once known to be an artifice, though no less useful for that, gradually loses its air of being an imaginatively constructed thing and, equally gradually, takes on the air of being something real and hard and concrete in its own right." (p. 13)
So it is with most of the maps by which managers steer. What was once known to be an artifice, though no less useful for that, gradually loses its air of being an imaginatively constructed thing and, equally gradually, takes on the air of being something real and hard and concrete in its own right." (p. 13)
(1978). Conceptual blockbusting : a pleasurable guide to better problem solving.
"Most people are not happy with criticism and, to make matters worse, are somewhat unsure of the quality of their own ideas. They therefore require a supportive environment in which to work."
(1982). The Computer Establishment.
"Computing is a technology with many paths to follow; at each fork there is vigorous dissension among the brightest practitioners. We need to preserve that dissension, to offer scientists and businessmen a reasonable chance to pursue whatever goal seems promising and customers the greatest possible opportunity to choose their supplier." (p. 408)
(1994). Competing for the Future.
"There beats in every person the heart of an explorer. The joy of discovery may be found in the pages of a new cookbook, in a brochure of exotic vacations, in an architect's plans for a custom-built home, in the trek to a remote trout stream, in the first run down a virgin-powdered ski slope, by the opportunity to explore the unfamiliar. Thus, it's not surprising that when a company's mission is largely undifferentiated from that of its competitors, employees may be less than inspired." (p. 132)
(1986). Communication and Community: implications of Martin Buber's Dialogue.
"Shunning has been used for centuries as a paradoxical technique of collectively disciplining a person to bring him or her back into the group. This method may be the lesser of evils, however. As one my friends keenly observed, shunning is better than death, which has been used in some groups to eliminate the deviant. Given these two bleak choices, most of us would probably choose being ignored, But we should not minimize the pain one can feel from such exclusion. As William james stated, there is no more fiendish behavior than to act as if 'another did not exist.'"
(1993). Communicating at Work.
Basics of conflict resolution include: supportiveness, positiveness, equality.
(2000). The Cluetrain Manifesto : The End of Business As Usual.
"Conversations are where intellectual capital gets generated. But business environments based on command-and-control are usually characterized by intimidation, coercion, and threats of reprisal. In contrast, genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange." (p. 15)
(2000). Claw Your Way to the Top: How to Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week.
"So the trick, with subordinates, is to keep them happy, productive, hopeful, and—above all—subordinate." (p. 36)
(1987). Classics of Public Administration.
"The philosophy of management by directive and control—regardless of whether it is hard or soft—is inadequate to motivate because the human needs on which this approach relies are today unimportant motivators of behavior. Direction and control are essentially useless in motivating people whose important needs are social and egoistic. Both the hard and the soft approach fail today because they are simply irrelevant to the situation." (p. 260)
(1997). The circle of innovation : you can't shrink your way to greatness.
"...wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but by imperfectly seizing the unknown." (p. 30)
(1988). Changing Ways: A Practical Tool for Implementing Change Within Organizations.
"A basic axiom of any change effort is that 'the further away the people defining the change are from the people who have to live with the change, then the more likelihood that the change will develop problems.'" (p. 59)
(1996). Changing the Bully Who Rules the World: Reading and Thinking about Ethics.
"We serious readers like to meditate upon villainy when we find it in life or in books. Such meditating makes us feel philosophical. Helping professionals are less peaceable. They think of human cruelty as something to study with the unswerving goal of getting rid of it. They interest themselves with, among other subjects, a spectacular specialty of villainy that would have made the poet Tom McGrath prick up his ears—that is, the villainous cunning by which a few human beings condition whole enclaves of other human beings dutifully to commit large-scale cruelty. They regard cruelty the way physicians regard a bacterium or a virus: first, they identify it as fast as they can—get its measure, so to speak, figure out its lifestyle and habitat of choice—and then second, they devise for it the most hostile environment that their technical prowess can invent. We would be furious if our doctor looked into our sore throat, drew back, and then cried out, 'How utterly fascinating! How extraordinary, really, the way those germs writhe and thrive in the host's dark vault of throat!' We want the doctor to be a confrontational agent of change, not an aesthete. If our doctor won't get rid of those squatters we'll find another doctor who will." (p. xxii)
(2003). Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It.
"Organizations that value you only for your business skills—a lot of Wall Street firms fall into this category—are very antiseptic. They tend to be built on addictions, but not loyalties: addictions to the money, addictions to the process. They are a bit like galley ships. The overseers don't care about the relationship. They just want you to keep rowing.
This is fine when times are good, but if you should ever fail to handle your oar well, you are overboard. Such firms will have no compunction about firing you and even ruining your reputation, if it serves their purpose." (p. 54)
(2010). Can Being Creative Improve Your Health?.
"Highly creative individuals have long noted the salutary effects of creative activity on both physical and mental health. Many types of creative work can relieve stress and enhance positive mood, two major factors in promoting good health."
(1993). C.G. Jung and the Problem of Evil: The Strange Trial of Mr. Hyde.
"To the extent that we are egocentric we live in fear, under a sense of constant threat. We also live out and fulfill only a small portion of our personalities, because the egocentric life is a cramped life. It is like living inside a walled, heavily defended castle. Here we try to feel secure, but it does not occur to us that our castle is also our prison." (p. 133)
(C)2014 CC-BY-NC 3.0, workcreatively.org