Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 09:51:46 -0500
From: devries-AT-mail.utexas.edu (Joshua DeVries)
Subject: Re: DISGRUNTLED


>Hi all. Just found this - haven't checked within yet, though? Anyone know
>anything about
>it? Is it like a _Processed World_ of the net, or tamer?
>
>Steve
>________________
>http://www.disgruntled.com/

I used to read Disgruntled on occasion. The fellow that does it is a
business professor named Dale Fitzgibbons. He has a discussion list that I
am on that is active during the fall and spring sessions of his class. Here
is the first bit of the intro to the list and class:

ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY
Department of Management and Quantitative Methods
MQM 221
Organizational Behavior
Fall 1995

Dr. Dale E. Fitzgibbons
WIH 23A
Office Hours: To be announced

A democratic insurgency does not begin with ideas, as intellectuals
presume, or even with great political leaders
who seize the moment. It originates among the ordinary
people who find the will to engage themselves with
their surrounding reality and to question the
conflict between what they are told and what
they see and experience.

--William Greider

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Ostensibly, MQM 221 is about the behavior of individuals in organizations.
Sections of this course usually concentrate on concepts and theories of
motivation, leadership, group dynamics, job satisfaction, decision making,
job/organizational design, and organizational change/development, to name
only a few. The approach of this section of 221 is a little different,
however. While we will be covering the same concepts and ideas, we will
using a very different lens (i.e. Critical Theory) to analyze and
understand them. We will start from a premise that organizations may not
be, necessarily, the most healthy or life-affirming places to spend most of
our waking lives. We will spend some time identifying and understanding the
organizational characteristics and features that substantiate that premise.


We will examine how these organizational characteristics influence
individuals and their reactions to those forces. Our focus will be more
heavily weighted toward how individual behavior is controlled, shaped and
modified for the "good" of the organization. We will discuss how oppressive
to the human spirit organizations can be in the name of efficiency,
productivity and profitability. We will see what happens to individuals
when they often innocently and unknowingly exchange personal freedom,
integrity and dignity for job security and a comfortable standard of
living.

-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-

The list can be pretty interesting. People in the class are required to
contribute as part of their participation grade, and he lets a few other
people on for variety, including yours truly. Sometimes it gets bogged down
in discussion such as making corporations good citizens, but often there
are better topics.




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                       O    Joshua DeVries,
                      O     Anarcho-Banjoist.
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                O    O
                 OOOO




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