Biblio
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(2003). The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.
"Employers are willing to pay a higher cost for temp laborers because they are disposable. 'We call it pimping people out,' says Suzie Qusenberry, 'because that's really what it is. I'm going to pimp you out for $8 an hour and all you're going to get is $5.35.' They take the money and you do the work. Isn't that just like pimping?'"
(2000). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences.
"Information technology operates through a series of displacements, from action to representation, from the politics of conflict to the invisible politics of forms and bureaucracy. Decades ago, Max Weber wrote of the iron cage of bureaucracy. Modern humans, he posited, are constrained at every juncture from true freedom of action by a set of rules of our own making. Some of these rules are formal, most are not. Information infrastructure adds another level of depth to the iron cage. In its layers, and in its complex interdependencies, it is a gossamer web with iron at its core." (p. 320)
(1998). Something More : Excavating your Authentic Self.
"'Disillusion only comes to the illusioned,' Dorothy Thompson reminds us in The Courage to be Happy, written in 1957. 'One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in,' especially ourselves." (p. 159)
(2003). Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank.
"Institutional rank abuse skews the judgment of management and employees away from organizational goals toward self-aggrandizement in the first case, self-preservation in the latter." (p. 30)
(1996). Software Portability with Imake.
(1987). Software Engineering with ADA.
(1967). Sociology and modern systems theory..
"As in any organization, rules were selectively evoked, broken, or ignored to suit the defined needs of personnel. Higher administrative levels, especially, avoided periodic attempts to have the rules codified and formalized, for fear of restricting the innovation and improvisation believed necessary to the care of patients. Also, the multiplicity of professional ideologies, theories, and purposes would never tolerate such a rigidification." (p. 150)
(2003). The Social Psychology of Stigma.
"How do people come to accept their own unjust treatment of the stigmatized? Ideological commitments lead them to self-justification. A justification ideology exempts stigmatized individuals from full moral inclusion, and as a result, the stigma in conjunction with the ideology can lead to rough treatment." (p. 128)
(1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing.
"As criticisms first start to increase the person exerts more effort, concentration is already quite high, and quality improves. As the criticisms continue to increase there comes a point where the additional increments of effort are now canceled because the person can't concentrate. Beyond this point, the greater the number of criticisms, the lower the quality of performance." (p. 227)
(1954). The Social Psychology of Industry.
(2005). The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying.
Abstract
"Ostracism threatens:
- our need to belong...
- our need for maintaining high self-esteem, because it carries with it the implicit or explicit accusation that we have done something wrong.
- our need for control over interactions with others, as well as our 'interpretive control' when the reason for our exclusion is ambiguous."
- may threaten our need to maintain our belief in a meaningful existence, because it reminds us of our fragile temporary existence and even our own death.
(1995). Social Organization of Work.
"Alienation occurs when work provides inadequately for human needs for identity and meaning. Work is alienating to the extent that one does it only from economic necessity, not from its intrinsic pleasures." (p. 56)
"A common response to alienating work is passive resistance through making work into a game (Burawoy, 2000), restricting one`s output (Roy, 1952), or focusing on aspects of work tangential to the main productive activity (Collinson, 2003). For instance, workers often adjust to alienating situations by focusing on interactions with their peers. Managers label such behavioral responses 'poor performance.' However, such behaviors do not necessarily result from incompetence or laziness: rather, they may be straightforward responses to having a job that is tedious, repetitive, or alienating. These responses are difficult to predict from workers' levels of job satisfaction or commitment. Workers who are very committed to their work may be the ones most likely to resist alienating conditions. Those who are less committed may simply exit or grudgingly suffer in silence." (p. 68)
"A common response to alienating work is passive resistance through making work into a game (Burawoy, 2000), restricting one`s output (Roy, 1952), or focusing on aspects of work tangential to the main productive activity (Collinson, 2003). For instance, workers often adjust to alienating situations by focusing on interactions with their peers. Managers label such behavioral responses 'poor performance.' However, such behaviors do not necessarily result from incompetence or laziness: rather, they may be straightforward responses to having a job that is tedious, repetitive, or alienating. These responses are difficult to predict from workers' levels of job satisfaction or commitment. Workers who are very committed to their work may be the ones most likely to resist alienating conditions. Those who are less committed may simply exit or grudgingly suffer in silence." (p. 68)
(2006). Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.
"Feeling secure, Kohlrieser argues, lets a person focus better on the work at hand, achieve goals, and see obstacles as challenges, not threats. Those who are anxious, in contrast, readily become preoccupied with the specter of failure, fearing that doing poorly will mean they will be rejected or abandoned (in this context, fired)—and so they play it safe." (p. 277)
(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)
(1968). The SNOBOL4 programming language.
(1992). Small Decencies : Reflections and Meditations on Being Human at Work.
"Our accomplishments are not too simple, mundane, and ordinary to merit a moment of glory. We deserve to have our fellow workers sing our song. We owe them a poem in their honor." (p. 160)
(1997). Slowing down to the speed of life : how to create a more peaceful, simpler life from the inside out.
"See forgiveness as a process, and know that it will get easier and easier each time the memory comes to mind. If you see the value of forgiveness and are willing to forgive, each time the memory comes to mind while you are in a state of healthy psychological functioning, the experience will be a little less painful." (p. 135)
(1997). Slaves of the Machine: The Quickening of Computer Technology (Bradford Book).
"Most of today's programmers are like lawyers who are concerned only with the law, not justice. Their letter-of-the-law, obey-or-you-will-be-punished tradition has the same problems in computing as it does in law." (P. 80)
(1999). Since Strangling Isn't an Option... : Dealing with Difficult People–Common Problems and Uncommon Solutions.
"It isn't always easy to have compassion for people who are in positions of power over us. We tend to think of them as having achieved something, or as having been given something we have not. Instead of thinking of your boss as a boss, think of her as a person. It's easier, and more productive, for two human beings to talk than it is for a boss and a subordinate to deliberate." (p. 39)
(1995). Silent Sabotage: Rescuing Our Careers, Our Companies, and Our Lives from the Creeping Paralysis of Anger and Bitterness.
"At the organizational level, we must begin removing the hierarchical walls that we've built around us....We must move away from the concept that the boss is omnipotent and all powerful [sic] and move toward a more fluid organizational structure that favors a shared approach toward conducting business." (p. 57)
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