Clippings

__Executive Development__ 8 (1995): 26-28.**  []
 * Hopkins, Hampton. "A challenge to managers: five ways to improve employee morale."

SUMMARY The article’s main focus is to discuss employee development opportunities as a method of improving employee morale and motivation on the job.

IMPORTANT ITEMS The five ways to improve employee morale are: 1. Social gatherings, which include such activities as picnics, philanthropic work, and parties 2. Employee recognition, which includes awards, promotions and thank-yous 3. Continuing education, which includes workshops and conferences; 4. Employee meetings, which include complaint sessions, brainstorming, and discussion forums  5. Empowerment, which includes involving employees through responsibility.

Moran, John & Brightman, Baird. “Journal of Workplace Learning.” Year: 2000, __MCB UP Ltd __****, Volume: 12, Issue: 2, Pages: 66-74**
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The article discusses the shift in management, from change itself, to the people facing change from impact.
 * SUMMARY**

IMPORTANT ITEMS 1. The article describes the change management cycle: understand the current situation, develop a change plan, and enlist others to develop a plan of action and then t stabilize results. 2. Presents the “TRY” (test, recalibrate, yes) model to help change leaders’ resistance to change 3. The article also lists what is needed in leaders to increase their ability to manage organizational change effectively.

 __Group Decision and Negotiation __. Issue: Volume 7, Number 3 / May, 1998. Pages: 265-289 **
 * Netherlands, Springer. “** **A Formal Study of Distributed Meeting Scheduling.”

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IMPORTANT ITEMS
 * 1) The excerpt discusses the idea of implementing routine organizational tasks, such as meeting scheduling. It talks about how meetings require a careful balance between the people involved privacy and personal preferences versus the organization (making efficient use of time and other resources).
 * 2) The excerpt thinks of meeting scheduling as an inherently distributed process, and that negotiating over meetings can be viewed as a distributed search process (p. 270).
 * 3) Keeping the process tractable requires introducing heuristics to guide distributed schedulers' decisions about what information to exchange and whether or not to propose the same tentative time for several meetings (p. 273).
 * 4) <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The excerpt also discusses how such heuristics could affect scheduling performance and efficiency in the workplace.
 * 5) <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> Lastly the excerpt discusses scheduling in over constrained situations, (Scheduling of high priority meetings at short notice, which requires cancellation and rescheduling of previously scheduled meetings).

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 * <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vinton, Karen. “Humor in the Workplace, Its More than Telling Jokes.” <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> __<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Small Group Research __**<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">**, Vol. 20, No. 2, 151-166 (1989)**

IMPORTANT ITEMS <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-list: Ignore; msobidifontfamily: Georgia; msofareastfontfamily: Georgia; msobidifontstyle: italic; msolist: Ignore;">1. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">This article focuses on the function of humor in a small, family-owned business (Which the company I work for is considered a small business, so I found this to be helpful.) <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-list: Ignore; msobidifontfamily: Georgia; msofareastfontfamily: Georgia; msobidifontstyle: italic; msolist: Ignore;">2. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The various types of humor discussed in the article help alleviate workplace tension. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-list: Ignore; msobidifontfamily: Georgia; msofareastfontfamily: Georgia; msobidifontstyle: italic; msolist: Ignore;">3. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Humor also has implications for socialization of employees and appears to help create bonds among the employees. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">