As If People Mattered

About the Book

What is the nature and role of dignity in organizations? Why do managers, professionals, employees, clients, and patients identify with the idea that organizations universally violate their dignity? What can we learn from taking a close look at what participants in organizations feel about their sense of worth? Why should we care?

Based on hundreds of interviews, this volume answers such questions. For example, how significant is this screaming of the protagonist in “Network.” “I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it anymore.” But he does—day in, day out—adapting to the abuse and eroding the emotional well-being of his personality.

Dignity is an understudied concept in organizational research, as is fear, a correlate of indignity. This work shows how managers feel free to denigrate dignity by virtue of the authority vested in their position and by the impersonality of the organization. For example, the reference to management persons as “they” or “management.” The volume begins with an academic approach to the issue of dignity in organizations. But the best academic work should result in actual practice. That is how this book views it. The book blends fieldwork and theory. It is a theoretically driven study of the nature of dignity in organizations and its role in the life of participants in organizations. Finally, the volume concludes with concrete approaches to promoting dignity and dignifying strategies in the organization.

About the Author

Bernard Baum is professor emeritus of health policy and administration, of managerial studies, and of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Dr. Baum received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago and subsequently served as director of organizational analysis for CNA Insurance Companies. He has been on the faculty of UIC since 1966, where he has taught organizational sociology, theory, and human resource management.

Dr. Baum is the author of numerous articles in journals such as Group and Organization Studies, Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Small Business Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Personnel Journal, and Academy of Management Journal. He has authored or edited a number of books including Decentralization of Authority in a Bureaucracy, Basics for Business, Organization Behavior and Change, and Intervention and The Management Use of Organizational Research.