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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Philosophical Journey Through Corporate Bureaucracy, May 12, 2003
"Our American dream is falling apart. The road to success is not as clear-cut as we were led to believe as children growing up in American society. We were taught to better ourselves and work towards pursuing a career and finally, having a family. The ideal of the American dream is being distorted by the organizations we work for. Family values are diminishing, and two incomes are needed where thirty years ago, one wage earner was more than adequate. Work ethics and business practices put pressure on us to be more committed to our jobs and less to our lives."So begins a philosophical journey through one segment of today's corporate landscape, as viewed by author Jessica Luke, a former IBM software application developer. The range of the book is broad; it covers the history of labor relations and a critique of current human resource management (personality types, stress, burnout, depression, time management, technology, innovation, communication, teamwork, motivation, incentives, performance evaluation, and training). She also touches briefly on executive compensation, the recent corporate accounting scandals, and the 90's practice of downsizing and outsourcing. This commentary is set against the book's thesis which seems to be that "the unscrupulous power of corporate greed" causes management to make decisions that do not value the individuality of workers. While practically each subject covered could be a book in itself, there's no denying the sea-change in many of our working lives that has occurred in the last three or four decades (or the 20th century, for that matter). Luke's experience working in corporate America, while not discussed directly, seems to be summed up in the following line: "Business organizations shamefully continue to operate with the same uncivilized, barbarian and rigid mindset that prevailed at the beginning of the century." Despite this indictment, her broader points seem to be: who bears the responsibility for employee satisfaction - management or the employee? How does one maintain a sense of self in our increasingly institutionalized world? Can individuals have a voice in bureaucracies? As worldwide population continues to increase, these are questions we will struggle with over the next decade, maybe longer. And I suspect we'll hear more from Luke on this subject, too; I distinctly heard a personal story shadowing the corporate analysis. In the meantime, she seems to have begun her journey at a place anyone in this writers' association can appreciate; with pen and paper and the fire of one's own thoughts.
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