There's more to work and the life of the organization than just numbers. In his new book on how people function in work settings, Allcorn calls it the human spirit. It too contributes to the life and performance of organizations, but like life itself it can die--or be killed. Allcorn argues that changes in how organizations are managed--downsizing, rightsizing, reengineering, and other catastrophic means--can have an unintended but devastating result. These factors can cause spiritual death--the end of that quality in people that keeps them alive, growing, and productive. Allcorn shows that management and the methods it uses to cope with organizational change must be adjusted to take into account a special kind of workplace spirituality and to nurture it, not destroy it. Indeed, he maintains that by appreciating the importance of the human spirit, and liberating the quality of spirituality into the workplace, benefits to the organization can be profoundly rewarding. Allcorn explains the practical, measurable results of this liberation, documenting his assertions in heartbreaking detail. Even the most tough-minded executive will soon come to consider this book as essential as a spreadsheet. Allcorn asserts that while spirituality inevitably has religious connotations, in his use of the word, it is fundamentally secular and powerfully humanistic. Besides the rationality of numbers and the irrationalities common to a defensive workplace, there is something else that permits members of organizations to rise above workplace adversities. This creates organizational success. As employees are downsized out or just furloughed, the effect on the organization and those who remain is clearly destructive. The author concludes that the way for an organization to achieve success is certainly not by killing its people's spirit by firing them. Other means exist to preserve the organization, and Allcorn explores them in careful, useful detail.

The workplace is not immune to the problems, pressures, and challenges presented by experiences of loss and trauma and the grief reactions they produce. This clearly written, well-crafted book offers important insights and understanding to help us appreciate the difficulties involved and prepare ourselves for dealing with such demanding situations when they arise. People's experiences of loss and trauma are, of course, not left at the factory gate or the office door. Nor are loss and traumatic events absent from the workplace itself. Loss, grief, and trauma are very much a part of life - and that includes working life. Executives, managers, human resource professionals, and employee assistance staff need to have at least a basic understanding of how loss, grief, and trauma affect people in the workplace. This book provides that foundation of understanding and offers guidance on how to find out more about these vitally important workplace issues.The text provides a valuable blend of theory and practice that will be of interest to those involved in management, human resources, and organizational studies as well as those interested in the social scientific study of loss, grief, and trauma - and, of course, to those involved in the helping professions. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with making the workplace a more humane and effective environment, or anyone wishing to develop an understanding of the complexities of loss, grief, and trauma in our lives.

Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses into relatively few words, metaphors, and images what conventional social science narratives would take much longer to articulate. Where poetry often hints and alludes, narrative seeks to spell out, expound, and complete. Where poetry leaves much mental space for the listener or reader to fill in with one’s imagination, narrative fills in the spaces with rich detail. Applied poetry and its contextual stories offer a way of accessing workplace experience that is unique and valuable in terms of understanding lives at work. The use of complementary psychodynamic theories, like all theories, is a way of trying to account for what we have found and experienced and in particular why it happened. "Why," the authors suggest, is critical in terms of understanding the sensing, images, and metaphors evoked by the poetry and stories that may resonate with hearers and readers for reasons that are unconscious and are rooted in the past. These transferences that come forward from life experience into the present are the critical data we work with. These are the data of psychoanalysis. This book both widens and deepens the scope of organizational research offered by other researchers, theorists, and approaches to understanding, interpreting, explaining, leading, and consulting with workplace organizations. Its triangulating integration of applied poetry, experience and stories behind the poetry, and the three psychoanalytic models of explaining life in workplaces, is a new and distinct contribution to organizational research, leadership, and consulting efforts to help organization members solve real, underlying problems and not offer simplistic, formulaic solutions based solely on a study of the organization’s surface. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, and management.

"In addition to updated references and case studies, the Second Edition includes new chapters on crisis management and innovation leadership. Each chapter provides guidance for contemporary and aspiring leaders in managing the ever-changing complexities o current and future healthcare systems. The growing necessity to manage unplanned change and undertake predictive and adaptive leadership roles is now a fundamental skill set and this workbook allows readers to understand the strategies to become a more effective leader in today's healthcare environment."--BOOK JACKET.

Human nature, in all its complexity, is the single most powerful factor in the workplace. Any effort at organizational diagnosis and change must incorporate the social and psychological dynamics of the operation to have a chance at success. Drawing on in-depth psychoanalytical theory, and written in clear, easy-to-understand language, this practical text introduces a dozen insightful perspectives for understanding organizational dynamics, and synthesizes them into an integrated approach to organizational diagnosis and change. Each perspective views the workplace from a different vantage point. Together they provide a panoramic view of the true complexity found in the workplace, and a foundation for changing organizational dynamics that will be equally useful for students and professional managers.

R. Paul Stevens and Alvin Ung tap into the wisdom of the Bible and the Christian spiritual tradition to redefine the workplace as an arena for personal spiritual growth. Together they discuss real-life dilemmas and give practical guidance on turning professional work into the catalyst for a richer, more balanced spiritual life. --from publisher description.

Listening deeply is the foundation of all effective organizational management, research, and consulting. This book explores the many aspects of attentive listening through storytelling and includes examples of organizational case studies. In Stein’s practice, listening deeply is an attitude evoked by the psychoanalytic concept of hovering attention—a careful attending to the person or group one is trying to help and an equally careful attending to how one is hearing these others. The listener’s own feelings are as crucially diagnostic as what the consultant observes in other people. This new edition of Listening Deeply updates historical context, theory, method, and organizational stories. A psychodynamic orientation informs much of the book and the language Stein uses is direct. His lessons are useful to the manager in any kind of organization, as well as practitioners of psychology, sociology, business management, medicine, and education.

Today’s organizational environment is characterized by high levels of cross-cultural, cross-national, and cross-religious communication, conflict, collaboration, and commerce. This environment produces myriad encounters between individuals who embrace different ideologies, religions and spiritual practices. As such, unanswered (and even unasked) questions about management, spirituality, and religion abound. This book, seeks to advance our understanding by asking the big questions. Blessed are Those Who Ask the Questions: What Should We be Asking About Management, Spirituality, and Religion in Organizations? is intended to be provocative in nature. Its chapters address novel ways that leadership, organizations, and organizational stakeholders mutually impact each other by their similarities and differences in religious, spiritual, and ideological traditions, cultures, and practices. Interdisciplinary in nature and firmly grounded in scholarly literature, this book identifies and maps out bold new trajectories for advancing the study of management spirituality, and religion (including but going far beyond Western, Christian conceptualizations of religion). Sometimes universal, sometimes quite specific, this volume identifies unexplored, underexplored, or unresolved issues in the field and proposes new streams of research. Diverse conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and critical treatments that honor a variety of inquiry styles and research methods push the boundaries of MSR research.