; Willful Blindness:
Why We Ignore the Obvious
at Our Peril
by Margaret Heffernan
(Walker and Company, 2011)
How can people and institutions fail
to foresee clear signs of trouble—even
in the face of warnings? Part of the
reason, the author claims, is that the
brain’s cognitive limits do not let
us absorb everything we encounter,
so we must filter what we take in.
Some of the filtering is beneficial—it allows us to overlook the
neighbor’s squalor or the spot on a colleague’s tie. The author
is more concerned with the dangerous effects of this blindness.
Love, ideology, fear, and the impulse to obey and conform all
play important roles in rendering us blind to the makings of
personal tragedies and organizational collapses.
; Blind Spots: Why We Fail
to Do What’s Right and
What to Do About It
by Max H. Braverman and
Ann E. Tenbrunsel
(Harvard Business, 2011)
Even good people engage in ethically
questionable behavior that contradicts their own preferred ethics, the
authors theorize. They behave unethically when it is easy to do, when it is
hard to verify, when they have insufficient time or information, or in situations of what the authors
call bounded awareness—often occurring in large organizations in which functions are walled off from one another. Staff
may do it in ways that allow them to preserve their perception
of themselves as ethical people. As antidotes to blind spots, the
authors claim, organizations can create greater transparency
and fewer silos by having employees do things like sign codes
of conduct or undergo training in ethics.
; In The Basement
of The Ivory Tower
by Professor X
(Viking, 2011)
What grade does one give a college
student who progresses from a sixth-to a tenth-grade reading level? The
author, identified only as an adjunct
professor of English, describes the
learning dilemma he faces teaching evening English classes in which
many of his students are unable to
learn what he has been hired to teach. He discusses the trend
of many colleges to increasingly hire adjunct faculty, who are
lured by the prestige of college teaching, hired on a piecework
basis, paid low wages, and shut out of academic decision-making. While students many times do not know the difference between adjuncts and professors, the faculty members
certainly do, and the differences have ramifications in the
classroom and in the psyche of adjunct faculty.
; The Big Shift: Navigating
the New Stage Beyond Midlife
by Marc Freedman
(Public-Affairs, 2011)
Powerful demographic changes are
increasing the need to create a new
map of life and to redefine how baby
boomers will live the last decades of
their lives. The period after midlife
and before age-induced infirmity,
roughly from 60 to 75, is changing significantly, the author argues.
Defining this part of life as the encore stage, Freedman urges
readers to think seriously about the choices during this stage,
given that many in this age group have not saved enough for
traditional retirement or cannot count on enough government
benefits or company-provided pensions to make up the difference. Ten suggestions to prepare for the encore stage include
a gap year for grown-ups, retraining and education, and
revamping human resources policies to help workers transition
to the new stage.
Powerful demographic changes are increasing the need
to create a new map of life and to redefine how baby
boomers will live the last decades of their lives.
