Organizations Books

I'm an American based in Japan and working all over Asia. I found this book to be an outstanding analysis of the relationships between Americans and their foreign colleagues or customers.

It's written from a business perspective more so than an academic perspective. Although the style is a bit heavy, I still found many of the anecdotes entertaining.

In the past four years, I have used Intercultural Communication in the Global Workplace with over 500 community college students interested in cultural differences from a business perspective. This book provides a useful structure for thinking and talking about both the theoretical foundations of global diversity as well as the practical implications of working cross culturally - - whether from a desk in the USA or traveling and working abroad. The book is well-organized and includes thoughtfully selected, real-life examples of cultural differences (which I, as an overseas expatriate of 20 years can verify). The real value of the book is in these multiple examples which give readers a sense of the rich diversity of our globalized world and the importance of encountering business people from other cultures (both within the USA and abroad) with an awareness of, and sensitivity to, cultural priorities. The case study in the chapter on negotiations with other cultures is particularly well-conceived and useful.

In the past four years, I have used Intercultural Communication in the Global Workplace with over 500 community college students interested in cultural differences from a business perspective. This book provides a useful structure for thinking and talking about both the theoretical foundations of global diversity as well as the practical implications of working cross culturally - - whether from a desk in the USA or traveling and working abroad. The book is well-organized and includes thoughtfully selected, real-life examples of cultural differences (which I, as an overseas expatriate of 20 years can verify). The real value of the book is in these multiple examples which give readers a sense of the rich diversity of our globalized world and the importance of encountering business people from other cultures (both within the USA and abroad) with an awareness of, and sensitivity to, their cultural priorities. The case study in the chapter on negotiations with other cultures is particularly well-conceived and useful.

There are a great many very good psychological thrillers out there, but this is the only one that satisfactorily explains how a person becomes a psychotic killer. All the others just expect you to accept that a person is a psychotic killer. I've always been fascinated by psychotics but never understood how someone becomes psychotic. Now that I understand it, I'm going back to re-read all my favorites. All you other novelists beware, Rick Lacey has just raised the bar. If you don't really understand psychosis and the psychotic transformatic experience, find another career because readers won't just blindly accept your characters anymore.

Involuntary Separation: Corporate Downsizing Gone Fatally Wrong by Rick Lacey is a compelx and deftly written novel about murder in the upper management of an international oil company. Revenge, suicide, and one man's single-minded obsession to halt corporate downsizing make for an exciting and savage unfolding drama that will compell the reader's total attention from first page to last. Also highly recommended is Rick Lacey's early novel Cat Fever.

John McCall finds his boss murdered, still seated at his desk with a bullet through his head. The letters ISP have been carefully written in marker with the P around the bullet wound. ISP, involuntary separation seems to be a powerful motive, but with hundreds of past employees laid off and hundreds more potentially threatened, suspects abound. Oddly, the victim was not that heavily involved in the previous downsizing and would not have been involved in the next one either.

John has already worked with the police on a previous case. Two years ago his wife Alicia and her best friend were brutally raped and murdered. While investigating Alicia's murder, police received so many calls from John's office phone late at night that they labeled him a workaholic with extreme dedication to Moon Oil. John is equally dedicated to ending corporate layoffs targeted to artificially inflate quarter reports. His dedication proves to be his downfall when Moon Oil uses his financial computer model to justify downsizing.

With rumors flying regarding another downsizing, John intends to find a way to stop it. His long-term financial forecasting models predict dire consequences for the economy if corporations continue to downsize, but John has not as yet been able to predict short-term negative results. When a second board member is murdered and ISP is found be brutally slashed on his belly, every employee of Moon Oil, past and present, becomes suspect. Meanwhile, the chairman of the board assigns John to keep an eye on Beatrice Winter because she has "the eyes of a killer".

Author Rick Lacey makes restitution for his own participation in a sever corporate downsizing at BP Oil by drawing upon his personal experiences as a Senior Financial Analyst in INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION. Lacey admits that INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION was written to start a national dialogue regarding corporate abuse in general and corporate downsizing in particular. The novel's psychotic killer seek revenge even while exposing the dangerous power plays that occur behind fancy boardroom doors. While the primary murder plot will hold readers riveted, it is the exposure of big business that will make readers indignant and angry with the abuses corporations perpetrate on their employees. Indeed, corporate abuses abound with an eye only for the next quarter: never mind the devastation to America's families and workforce, not to mention to the long term health of the company. Consequently, the novel succeeds with a powerful tale that affects every citizen of America. In addition, Lacey's sophisticated prose will appeal to literature lovers who enjoy a touch of metafiction, irony, and satire. Note: Some discerning readers will be ethically challenged by John's evolving personal relationship with his psychiatrist. INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION comes very highly recommended.

Fr. Byron is the pastor of my church, Holy Trinity, in Georgetown, DC. In this artfully written work, he explores the essence of Ignatian spirtuality applied to education and being an educator, or simply day to day living and being part of the wonderful circle of friends who try, as well as each of them can, to live by the principles of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

Jesuit Saturdays reads easily and I was anxious to keep turning to the next page to learn another gem of wisdom from Fr. Byron. I overwhelmingly recommend this book to anyone who wants to plant the first seed or nourish his or her on-going spirituality and perhaps learn better what God's will for her/him is.

Am not in the habit of reading "religious" books. But, someone had given this book to me - and noticed that coincidentally, it was by the same author as this one spiritual book I had picked up several years back while visiting Georgetown University. Really can relate to the language and practical philosophy that Fr. Byron uses to convey his points - true to Jesuit form. Even more impressive is how well-read Fr. Byron seems to be - from philosophy, to politics and business. Would highly recommend to everyone, but particularly to those who are interested or working in politics and business.

These days Jesuits and their co-workers, particularly in the educational apostolate, are trying to elaborate together their shared mission in common awareness of the centuries-old Jesuit tradition. Fr. William Byron here makes his own valuable and informed contribution to the cause, drawing on fifty years of experience, much of it in key administrative positions, summing up some of his recent keynote speeches, and citing extensively individuals and institutions involved in the world-wide Jesuit apostolate. He writes of the founder of the Jesuits, the reasons they are in education, the kind of alumni they seek to form, discernment and choice, service of others, celibacy, being a responsible individual in community, proper use of talents, the value of the cross, and the question of vocations to the Jesuit order. He shares with us as within a family everything from the highest ideals of the order to the difficulties of using community cars. Anyone who wants to know about the Jesuits could profit from this book, but it's particularly aimed at those who work in the Jesuit schools, and its individual chapters would be especially useful as topics for their common discussion. A correction: the book has 112 pages, not 260.

A 'must have' for any feminist's library. I would have liked to have it in hardback though.

Those going to this book for traditional feminist theology may come away disappointed. It can perhaps be understood more as a critique of feminism than an endorsement. Observe how Bynum, perhaps the most respected medievalist in the United States, sheds considerable doubt on some standard Seminary mythology:

"It was not women who originated female images of God.... such language is in no way the special preserve of female writers... There is no reason to assert, as some have done, that the theme of the motherhood of God is a 'feminine insight.' Moreover it is not at all clear, although many scholars assume it, that women are particularly drawn to feminine imagery" (140).

Bynum goes on to explain that in the Middle Ages, feminine God images were occasionally employed by men, specifically abbots, "because they needed to supplement their image of authority with that for which the maternal stood" (154). Interestingly enough, women writers used such imagery much more rarely, if at all. "Jesus as Mother" can therefore be contextually explained as a response to leadership challenges in medieval monasteries, not as a long-suppressed feminine ethos:

"The theme of God's motherhood is a minor one in all writers of the high Middle Ages except Julian of Norwich. Too long neglected or even repressed by editors and translators, it is perhaps now in danger of receiving more emphasis than it deserves" (168).

Instead, what stands out in the writings of twelfth and thirteenth century nuns of Helfta is their theological orthodoxy:

"Unlike the God of the fourteenth-century mystics (Julian of Norwich or Eckhart , for example), the God of [Gertrude's] visions is tough... There appears to have been a moment in the thirteenth century at which the growing sense of man's likeness to God - expressed not only in the later medieval emphasis on Christ's humanness and the rich variety of homey and natural metaphors for the divine but also in the new confidence about man's capacity for intimate union with God - was still balanced by older images of an awesome God, totally unlike man, who rules a universe... This thirteenth-century combination of likeness and unlikeness underlay the optimism and strength of the piety of Helfta" (255).

Bynum's book, then, is in agreement with another medieval historian, Barbara Newman, who in another misleadingly titled book, "From Virile Woman to WomanChrist," wrote:

"It was not because of their commitment to feminism, self-empowerment, subversion, sexuality, or 'the body' that [medieval woman] struggled and won their voices; it was because of their commitment to God" (p. 246).

Shortly after Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006, she gave a sermon in which she referred to "our mother Jesus." This caused gnashing of teeth in some Anglican circles, whose members accused her of appealing to "radical feminist theology." But in fact, as historian Caroline Walker Bynum demonstrated twenty-five years earlier in this wonderful and ground-breaking collection of essays, the feminization of Jesus (and occasionally of God the Father) wasn't unknown in 12th century Cistercian monastic writings. And no one can accuse these high middle age monks of radical feminist theology.

Bynum's Jesus as Mother actually contains five erudite but enjoyably readable essays. They deal in one way or another with spirituality in the 12th and 13th centuries. The final essay, "Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta," is especially fine, and is long enough to be a short book in its own right. But the essay that's attracted the most attention is the fourth: "Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twenfth-Century Cistercian Writing."

In this carefully crafted and utterly nonpolemical essay, Bynum demonstrates that Cistercian models of community and leadership were frequently thought of in maternal terms, and these in turn were adapted from maternal metaphors to describe the nurturing and loving qualities of Jesus. The relationship between monk and abbot was often spoken of in mother-child terms, just as was the relationship between Christian and Christ. No 12th-century Cistercian would've thought the expression "our mother Jesus" unusual or heretical. On the contrary, he would've thought it nicely captured the essence of the Christian story.

How marvelous that an all-male environment in a time too often referred to by us as the "dark ages" should've so enriched discourse about Jesus and God. Surely the "dark ages" have things to teach us.

Readers who enjoy Jesus as Mother may want to take a look at more of Bynum's work. A particular favorite of mine is Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. I look forward to reading her recently released (2007) Wonderful Blood.

This book not only contains a profusion of photos but also is quite informative. The reader gets a brief biography of the former Cardinal Wojtyla. One learns of the horrors of the Nazi German occupation, "Lolek's" forced labor in a stone quarry, his study for the priesthood, his lifelong interest in ethics, his love of the outdoors (hiking, skiing, canoeing, etc.). He was a quintessential Pole. After assuming the papacy, Pope John Paul II had Christmas dinner at Krakow with old friends.

It is ironic that the Communist authorities underrated him. He was an advocate of all, not just Catholics. He took a lead in ecumenism, becoming a pioneer of Christian unity. He forgave Mehmet Agca, the Turk who shot him. He revived the office of the deacon. He met with countless world leaders, including Fidel Castro. He believed that universities should be places of encounter with Christ. He reached out to people of all ages, and was an active participant in World Youth Days. It is no exaggeration to say that he "always had the personal touch".

This book is candid about controversial issues. It mentions such things as birth control and the death penalty.

There is a list of canonizations and beautifications performed by Pope John Paul II. The best-known saint canonized by this Pope was Father Maxilian Kolbe, canonized October 10, 1982. Father Kolbe had given his life in free exchange for another prisoner at the German death camp of Auschwitz.

Published to coincide with John Paul II's 25th Papal anniversary in 2003, John Paul II: A Light for the World, is a stunningly beautiful tribute to the late pontiff. Rich with gorgeous photography, this beautifully designed book provides an intimate look at John Paul II and a view of the Vatican that is rarely seen outside its walls. The text (masterfully edited by Sr. Mary Ann Walsh) includes selections from the Pope's writings and speeches, essays by friends, scholars, and church leaders, as well as personal recollections that give us a glimpse of the humanity and humor of the man who led the Catholic Church for 27 years.

No doubt that with the passing of John Paul II, publishers will be rushing to slap together "tribute" books. However, I can't imagine a more thorough, beautifully-produced, or inspiring a volume as this. It is the ultimate commemoration of one of the world's great spiritual leaders.

This is perhaps the best picture book of John Paul 11 there is. It was a picture book of the countries that he has visited, and was published just before his twenty-fifth anniversary of his being a pope. This was worth the money. It is wonderful.

This book is well grounded and strategically linked to the very existance of organizations in the future. The authors discribe a dynamic process based on values to move any bureaucracy toward cutomer focused success. Read any chapter and reap the benefits, read the whole and fly

This book is the first to explain how information flow and the management of corporate knowledge changes the nature of business. Unlike business process reengineering and other management fads which treats individuals as cogs in the business machine, this book advances the notion that the intelligence and expertise of the people in an organization define success--and that such intelligence and expertise can be amplified by information technology.

I'm a technologist, and this book is the first to adequately explain the relationship between information technology and business organization--David M. Kalman

What a great book! Beautiful pictures of children and dogs from all around the globe appeal to people of all ages (my 8-month old son as well as myself), and large text appeals to those beginning to read. The message of the book itself is simple and respectful, and doesn't talk about the imminent purchase of a dog (thank goodness!).

This is a delightful little book full of beautiful pictures of children from all over the world with their dogs. When I sit down to read the book with my daughters (5 and 3 years old) they delight at the colorful pictures.

A Kid's Best Friend is effective on many levels. Convinced that dogs are sentient beings, I especially love that the pictures show a relationship between human and canine. The pictures capture my daughters' attention and are clear illustrations of the symbiotic relationships in which both child and dog benefit. Additionally, many different cultures are represented and each time we read the book, the girls ask about different children and their lives so far away.

This book has quickly become my daughters' favorite bedtime read. They request it by name each night after calling Sadie our sweet shepherd mix up on the bed to cuddle with them.--L.P.Watkins

Being a dog lover, I thought this was an absolutely wonderful book. The pictures are amazing, and I love the fact that they are of children and their dogs from many different countries. I don't even think I read the words the first two times I looked at the book!! I just looked at all the pictures of the doggies...and loved seeing the children in their different environments. I hope you enjoy this book as much as my Infant Room children and I did!!!:)

It mainly focuses on information systems as a core of living organizations. I liked and I recommend this work to everybody who likes original works on organizations.

"This book brings together", Chun Wei Choo writes, "the insight developed from research in organization theory and information science into a generel framework for understanding the richness and complexity of information use in organizations. Research in organization theory suggests that organizations create and use information in three strategic arenas. First, organizations interpret information about the environment in order to construct meaning about what is happening to the organization and what the organization is doing. Second, they create new knowledge by converting and combining the expertise and know-how of their members in order to learn and innovate. Finally, they process and analyze information in order to select and commit to appropriate courses of action...The book has the following objectives. First, it analyzes and compares the principal modes by which an organization uses information strategically to make sense of its changing environment, create new knowledge for innovation, and make decisions that reflect past learning and ongoing adaptation. Second, it examines the structure and dynamics of information seeking...Third, it proposes a new framework of the knowing organization (from the Preface)."

In this context, Chun Wei Choo divides his book into seven chapters, and he:

* introduces the theories of organizations as sense-making communities, knowledge-creating enterprises, and decision-making systems, and show how the three modes of information as sense making, knowledge creating, and decision making use complement each other by supplying some of the missing pieces necessary for each mode to function.

* identifies and relates the major elements that influence the behavior of the individual when seeking (starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, extracting, verifying, and ending) and using (selection and processing of information) information.

* shows how organizations, as social systems of people, structures, and processes, use information to make sense of the environment, create new knowledge for learning and innovation, and make decisions that enable action.

* examines the theory and process underlying the knowing organization.

* describes the tensions as tensions in sense making, tensions in knowledge creating, and tensions in decision making that are inherent in the knowing processes, and how the dynamics of balancing these tensions enable the knowing organization to be effective in the short term, and adaptive over the long term.

This book is highly recommended for HR and IT professionals.

A highly informative examination of a type of organization that is successful by using information strategically to make sense of its changing environment, creating new knowledge for innovation, and making decisions that reflect past learning and adaptation. Provides a general model for understanding information use and many other models. Filled with references to research and other publications. This is an informative, information-packed book! Excellent.

Un folleto con muchos ideas para compartir y discutir con sus compañeros y compañeras de trabajo y de escuela. Presenta perspectivas que animan a uno estudiar al fondo cuestiones sociales y políticas. Da confianza en nuestra capacidad para entender la historia y organizar para cambiar la socieded.
¿Cual es la relación entre educación y salarios? ¿Porque la educación no se mejora en una sociedad capitalista, aún en una sociedad tan rica como Estados Unidos, a pesar la las muchas pláticas de presidentes y congresistas? ¿Porque hay tantos debates sobre educación pública y escuelas privadas? ¿Cual es la relación entre la crises en educación y el empeoramiento de salarios y condiciones de trabajo?
El autor explica que los ricos necesitan empleados obedientes, no trabajadores con la confianza y capacidad para cuestionar, leer, estudiar y organizar. Toma como ejemplo los ideas de Che Guevara y la revolución cubana, y cita ejemplos de luchas obreras hoy en día. Explica la necesidad de promover la educación como proceso social y con la meta de estudiar y aprender durante toda la vida. "No hay mejor razon para hacer la revolución socialista."

La educación dentro del sistema del dólar todopoderoso no tiene nada que ver con el
aprendizaje ni con la cultura.El sistema de educación existe para regimentar a los jovenes
obreros e inculcar en los jovenes de la clase media y de los superricos de que son
superiores a nosotros los trabajadores. Cuba socialista brinda educación de por vida y una
campaña de televisión llamada ' La Universidad Para Todos.' Tiene esas cosas porque allí
hicieron una revolución. ? Cómo podimos hacer una revolución aqui, en el estomago de la
Bestia Imperial ? ? Cómo podremos cambiarnos nosotros mismos en el proceso ? Estos
son los temas de este folleto excelente.

This pamphlet really opened my eyes. I have been all the way through education to a final degree and teach college. However, this little pamphlet tells more about education, real education, than anything I have read before.

What is called education in this society is fitting you into the slots that this exploitative, oppressive society has for us, not providing us with knowledge, blaming us for our grades and putting some people in 'good' jobs and some people in bad, all to mask a system that exploits us all to benefit the big business rich? I have been to graduate school and have friends with Ph Ds and hung with several Poet Laureates of the US and people saturated with what this society calls education, but I have coworkers at the bus garage smarter than most of them.

This pamphlet explains why this is, and how we can fight for real education. Real education is learning the tools to understand this system, learn to fight, learn to do real things in a real world, real education can come only through mass struggles against this system. Real education can't be separate from work, from life, from struggle.

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Au moment où plusieurs de mes amis essaient de payer leurs prêts étudiants gigantesques et que je m'embourbe dans des débats chauds avec mes compagnes de travail pour essayer de les convaincre de cesser de harceler leurs enfants à propos des soi-disant bénéfices de continuer leur éducation, cette petite brochure tombe à point. Écrite de toute évidence par quelqu'un qui aime lire et penser, et qui sait ce que c'est se faire abrutir par un système scolaire qui vise des objectifs tout autres, cet œuvre place la lutte pour une éducation véritable dans le contexte de la lutte pour une société plus humaine. Met fin à toute illusion qu'on puisse séparer les institutions scolaires dans une société inégale des inégalités mêmes. Un plaisir à lire et à y réflêchir.

By HolyAtlanta

This booklet was published during the phony debate between Gore and Bush on "education reform" in the 2000 election campaign. It explains why education cannot be "reformed" under capitalism. Barnes talks about how capitalist education from grade school through college socializes us to become docile worker bees and why we have to unlearn a lot of the junk they teach in school in order to become effective fighters for workers' rights today and for a socialist future.

I have been all the way through education to a final degree and teach college now. Yet, this little pamphlet ells more about education, real education, than anything I have read before. It discusses how we need real education not just the way schools just fit us into the slots that this society wants, blaming our grades for giving people in 'good' jobs and some people into "bad," all to mask a system that exploits us all to benefit the big business rich? This pamphlet explains why this is, and how we can fight for real education. Real education is learning the tools to understand this system, learn to fight, learn to do real things in a real world, and it can't be separate from work, from life, from struggle. Check out Capitalism's World Disorder, the book this is excerpted from.

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