Silverman, L. L., & Propst A. L.
(1998).
Critical SHIFT: The Future of Quality in Organizational Performance.
"Sometimes the search for a position in your organization that matches your desires leaves you empty-handed. In this situation you must make the decision to leave the organization or stay and create a new position if you believe it will add value. If you decide to stay, do not be deterred by those who tell you it will be impossible to create a new role. Our parents taught us 'Where there's a will, there's a way.' "
Rudolph, B.
(1998).
Disconnected: How Six People from AT&T Discovered the New Meaning of Work in a Downsized Corporate America.
"Surely the old social contract, that basic exchange of loyalty for security, has been destroyed....
Some business theorists envision a new workplace that will accomodate both organizational flexibility and individual fulfillment. In their hopeful vision, companies will offer opportunities; employees will provide labor and talent. Workers will shuttle between projects and employers while organizations add and subtract staffers in a seamless ebb and flow.
Can we allow ourselves any such optimism? If the experiences of these six people are any indication, this process will be messy, and the concomitant dislocation severe. 'I must manage my own career' is indeed the brave new rallying cry of today's company man, but it must be tempered by one basic fact: Power, as ever, resides with the organization." (p. 200)
Levinson, H.
(1975).
Executive Stress.
"The faster one is going to drive, the more one had better be certain both about the vehicle and the road. That way one has a better chance of getting where one is going. So it is with a career." (p. 104)
Prather, H.
(1986).
Notes on How to Live in the World (and Still Be Happy).
"Thinking that appearances are everything, the ego naturally concludes that 'you are what you do.' During our middle span of life the seemingly affable question 'What do you do?' really means 'Are you somebody?' and most of us think far too much about how to word our answer should some stranger at a party ask us this question, even though if we just took a moment to look at our feelings we would see that we really don't care what a stranger thinks of us. It is only our ego that attempts to judge, and being quite blind, all it can see is other egos. This common social line of attack and counterattack has so very little to do with what people are at their core that you would think it would be self-evident that a person's means of earning a living reveals only the most superficial and insignificant information about what he or she is, and yet the issue of career has become a source of great unhappiness." (p. 115)