Biblio
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(1987). Finite and Infinite Games : A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.
"'Machine' is used here as inclusive of technology and not as an example of it—as a way of drawing attention to the mechanical rationality of technology. We might be surprised by the technological devices that spring from the imagination of gifted inventors and engineers, but there is nothing surprising in the technology itself. The physicist's bomb is as thoroughly mechanical as the Neanderthal's lever—each the exercise of calculable cause-and-effect sequences." (p. 80)
(1989). A Fight to a Better End.
"It's hard to forgive someone who is abusive or spiteful to you. It's even harder to forgive someone who doesn't care whether or not he or she is forgiven." (p. 157)
(1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.
"People stay with roles that frustrate them because of the dynamics of the structure. Something about their own lives, relationships, or position makes each person 'right' for the part he plays. It all seems so predetermined, yet the factors that create this may, individually, be quite inconsequential. People may even be drawn into the roles which clash with their personalities. Then, horrifyingly, their personalities may change over time to match the role they have been given." (p. 412)
(1990). The Fifth Discipline.
"All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team's collective strategy—maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person's view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it's usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn."
(2004). Fear and Other Uninvited Guests: Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep Us from Optimal Living and Loving.
"Blaming is the easiest way to ruin your career. It's surprising how many people blame when it never benefits the blamer. If you observe the best employees or bosses, they don't blame, they just talk about the facts of what happened with another person." (p. 107)
(1996). Fat and Mean: The Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial "Downsizing".
"Part of the problem with the emergence of the 'disposable' worker is that the potential advantages of true 'flexiblity' at work have been compromised. Employers can benefit from some leeway in how they schedule their workforce. And many employees, especially those with children, can benefit from choice and discretion in scheduling their own working time. But disposability is not flexibility. As a result of recent trends, part-time and more contingent work is becoming a sentence, not an opportunity. Workers are losing rights, choice, and benefits." (p. 246)
(2000). Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything.
"Our idea of boredom—ennui, tedium, monotony, lassitude, mental doldrums—has been a modern invention. The word boredom barely existed even a century ago." (p. 270)
(2000). Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success.
"Why are people so hesitant to change? I believe that some, like Audubon, believe they are supposed to pursue a particular course of action for some reason—even though it doesn't suit their gifts and talents. And when they are not working in areas of strength, they do poorly." (p. 91)
(2005). Facing the Beasts: Everybody’s a Critic.
2011,
"Everyone I meet has their own baggage of humanity, foibles that I would find it easy to criticize. But if I can reduce the amount of critical aggression I bring to a situation, my relationships become easier."
(1998). Exploring Ethics.
(1988). Expert System Applications.
(1975). Executive Stress.
"The cost of self-doubt in dollars and frustration is beyond computation. Despite their capacity for zest and spirit, uncounted numbers of people endure what they experience as dead-end traps with quiet desperation. They want to do something bigger and more exciting than what they are doing, but they are either afraid or don't know where to begin. They are trapped by barriers they cannot see and hindered by psychological glasses that distort their perception of themselves. The tragedy of having given up on themselves is that so many could use what seem to be barriers as stepping stones to gratification. Too much self-doubt blinds us to the opportunities around us. Without knowing where to start pulling oneself out of the psychological trap, even the person with considerable self-confidence has difficulty doing so." (p. 74)
(1961). Excellence.
"It may help the reader to know what my own vantage point is. I am concerned with the social context in which excellence may survive or be smothered. I am concerned with the fate of excellence in our society." (p. 11)
(2009). Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things.
"If individual human beings can form forceful and persistent mental models, organizations or groups of people seem to be able to do so on an almost unimaginable scale. A person has secret doubts and fears. An organization has the emotional life of a reptile." (p. 93)
(1999). Ethics on the Job: Cases and Strategies.
"To act ethically is, at the very least, to strive to act in ways that do not hurt other people; that respect their dignity, individuality, and uniquely moral value; and that treat others as equally important to oneself. If you believe these are worthwhile goals, then you have reason to strive to act ethically. If you do not believe these are worthwhile goals for human beings to pursue, then you may believe it is not important to act ethically." (p. 7)
(2001). Ethics for the New Millennium.
260. Abstract
"And whereas a vision properly motivated—which recognizes others' desire for and equal right to happiness and to be free of suffering—can lead to wonders, when divorced from basic human feeling the potential for destruction cannot be overestimated." (p. 72)
(1992). Ethical Theory and Business.
"Those who question the legitimacy of the modern corporation altogether because of the evils of excessive corporate power usually believe that the corporation should have no right to decide how things are going to be for its constituents. While we believe that each person has the right to be treated not as a means to some corporate end but as an end in itself, we would not go so far as to say the corporation has no rights whatsoever. Our more moderate stance is that if the modern corporation requires treating others as a means to an end, then these others must agree on, and hence participate (or choose not to participate) in, the decisions to be used as such." (p. 78)
(1999). Essential Java Style.
(1994). Escape From Freedom.
"The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours." (p. 288)
(2006). The Envy of Excellence: Administrative Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors.
"The inching-out process is at once structural (affecting the target's social location in the workplace) and psychological (changing the targets conception of self). Structurally, the shift involves the target's increasing absense from social gatherings, and more important, a reduction in the number and importance of positions held in the workplace." (p. 177)
"Far from being merely cognitive, the inching out process encompasses the whole of the target's being. It is a sense of growing ontological apartness from the workplace. When the target is physically near the eliminators, he or she commonly experiences sweating, dizziness, trembling, shortness of breath, dryness of mouth, or heart palpitations—symptoms of stress that usually disappear once away from the workplace." (p. 194)
(1999). Enterprise Javabeans by Example.
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