Biblio
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(1993). Snow Crash.
Stephenson's dark social satire illustrates what an anti-ROWE future might look like:
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
(2002). Defying the Crowd: cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity.
"Creative people are those who consciously and purposefully decide to follow their own path. They do it because they want to, not because someone makes them." (p. 237)
(1995). Dracula.
"I suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength give Love rein..."
(1989). Management.
"Rosabeth Kanter has argued that power can easily become institutionalized. Those whom others believe to possess power seem to find it easier to influence other people around them—and thus to garner even more genuine power. By the same token, 'powerlessness' is a difficult condition to overcome." (p. 306)
(2007). The paranoia switch.
One instructive example is the Office of Financial Management at the University of Washington, which reports that those who are willing to admit mistakes belong to a category of leaders who have a genuine 'work process focus,' a quality that involves recognizing and supporting the team, and an interest in how the job gets done. In contrast, those who lead by using our fears focus solely on achieving and maintaining personal influence—regardless of how this is accomplished—and characteristically such leaders are unwilling to acknowledge their mistakes." (p. 182)
(1979). Power plays: How to deal like a lawyer in person-to-person confrontations and get your rights.
"Remember, an employer who won't give you your rights when you ask for them must be convinced that it is in his interest to give you your rights." (p. 105)
(1997). The C++ programming language.
(2005). Innovation at the Speed of Laughter: 8 Secrets to World Class Idea Generation.
"Unfortunately some individuals who are full of wonderful and innovative ideas may be viewed as sullen, non-participating appendages, disconnected or, worse yet, lazy. Perhaps the real truth is that they are being asked to create ideas (already an emotional risk) in a way that is not suited for their style or comfort with focus. A drastic example of this sort of misclassification is Albert Einstein, who was labelled by many as lazy and arrogant by traditional academic standards of the time because he preferred a process of discovery and innovation that was isolated and introspective."
(1999). The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits.
"The recent book Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices describes work stress among software engineers, thus highlighting issues important throughout many occupations. 'Knowledge workers, like senior executives, experience immense pressure to . . . put work above all else,' observes University of Michigan business professor Leslie A. Perlow, who studied a Fortune 500 company to write the book. 'Engineers believe that they must be perceived as always willing to "accommodate the demands of the work." . . .They should be willing to do whatever is asked, not just in terms of producing output but also in terms of working whatever hours are deemed necessary to get the job done.' As long as nobody's getting hurt, what's the big deal? The big deal is—somebody's getting hurt." (p. 179)
(1999). Html Complete.
(2002). Creativity.
Express Exec.
"Many of the most important tasks related to shaping and fostering ideas are not a 'mandated' part of a manager's role. The experimentation and play that is so important to creativity will not occur unless managers match what they say with what they and the organization do to reward and recognize risk taking, whether or not it is successful." (p. 85)
(1987). Applied finite mathematics.
(1994). Distributed Operating Systems.
(2000). Digital Capital : Harnessing the Power of Business Webs.
"Corruption thrives in a culture of secrecy." (p. 182)
(1989). Anger: the misunderstood emotion.
"The anger that fuels revolt does not arise, therefore, from objective conditions of deprivation or misery. As long as people regard those conditions as natural and inevitable, as God's Law or man`s way, they do not feel angry about them. So sociologists speak instead of 'relative deprivation,' the subjective comparisons that people make when they compare their actual lives to what might be possible. Alexis de Toequeville observed that 'evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested,' and the freed slave Frederick Douglass put the same idea more passionately. 'Beat and cuff your slave,' he wrote, 'keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog, but feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom intrude.'" (p. 261)
(1967). The Principles of Scientific Management.
"The knowledge obtained from accurate time study, for example, is a powerful implement, and can be used, in one case to promote harmony between workmen and the management, by gradually educating, training, and leading the workmen into new and better methods of doing work, or, in the other case, it may be used more or less as a club to drive the workmen into doing a larger day's work for approximately the same pay that they had received in the past." (p. 134)
(2004). The organization of information.
(2007). Do You Exist?.
Computerworld.
"You can no longer expect your professional standing to progress if you dont have an easily accessible, broadly informative presence on the Web. And while that virtual existence is essential in itself, it's not enough. You have to contribute something..."
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