by david allan van nostrand | Oct 18, 2021 | Items in the News, Organizational Behavior, The Myopia of Experts
People are sick of managers. The news is full of people not going back to their jobs and managers are a big reason. Commutes are seen as what they are – huge chunks of unproductive time to get to and from work so a hall monitor can loom over you and take...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 6, 2021 | Items in the News, Organizational Behavior
Rolling cigars is a repetitive manual task that requires only the use of the hands and eyes. Back in the cigar factories of Havana in the late 1800s, Saturnino Martinez thought reading to cigar rollers would help alleviate their boredom as they silently made one cigar...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 14, 2021 | Items in the News, Organizational Behavior, Social Desirability
“Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 22, 2021 | Human Behavior, Organizational Behavior, The Myopia of Experts
Governor-general and city builder Grigory Potemkin built fake villages along the banks of the Dneiper River to impress Russian Empress Catherine the Great during her journey to Crimea in 1787. The structures would be secretly disassembled after she passed and...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 1, 2021 | Human Behavior, Misinformation traps, Organizational Behavior
William Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote a fictional novel called The Ugly American*. The title refers to the world’s belief that typical Americans are insensitive to the languages, customs, traditions, religions, and backgrounds of peoples of other lands and...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 25, 2021 | Feasibility studies, Organizational Behavior, Strategy
It was the thirteenth day in a row the temperature was over one hundred degrees. The air was so heavy and wet it was like we were wearing it. I was riding with Joe Hudson in his rusted Chevrolet. On its last legs, it had no A/C or shock absorbers. It lurched and...
