• Gary,  organizational resilience

    The dilemmas of a service economy

    One of the biggest challenges we face at the moment is the shift towards a service economy. Depending on the statistics that you read, about 70% of American jobs, and 80% of US GDP, are based on services.  It’s not much different for many other “developed” (3rd World, OECD…) countries.  That information, though, only generates a lot more questions. For instance: What constitutes services?  The answer varies a great deal.  In the broadest economic terms, activities get lumped into two very general categories:  goods and services.  Everything that is not a physical product can be considered a service.  Those get categorized and counted quite differently, though, by different organizations and…

  • executive coaching,  HR Investigations,  Teresa,  toxic workplace

    Workplace Bullying in American Organizations

    For nearly two decades now, management experts, scholars, practitioners, and authors of popular business books have urged American employers to treat their employees with respect, engage in open dialogue, eliminate fear, and encourage employee input and feedback. At the same time, employers have also been encouraged to lead their organizations toward the creation of a fair and respectful culture—one that includes fairness, civility, and dignity for the employees who work there through effective leadership, employment policies, benefit programs, internal communication, and the like (Daniel & Metcalf, 2001; Daniel, 2003a, Daniel, 2003b; Daniel, 2006; Daniel, 2009b; Deming, 1982, 2000; Drucker, 1992; Goldsmith et al., 2003; Hartling & Sparks, 2002; Hornstein, 1996,…