Thursday, November 11, 2010

Fast Company, November 11, 2010, Thursday

Fast Company

November 11, 2010, Thursday

Fast Company

Narcissism and Creativity: Intriguing and Troubling Findings

BY FC Expert Blogger Robert I. Sutton, PhDToday
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

A trio of researchers--Jack Goncalo and Sharon Kim of Cornell University, and Frank Flynn of Stanford--have done a pair of experiments on narcissism and creativity (see the description here) that are fascinating and have some disturbing implications. In both studies, they used a questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (see the long version of it here and test yourself) to assess if people suffered--or perhaps enjoyed--this characteristic.

In the first study, students were placed in pairs and asked to pitch an ideas to their partner for a movie concept. The results: "the ideas impressed the person evaluating the pitch roughly 50% more than did those from the least narcissistic pitchers." BUT the interesting twist was when these same ideas were evaluated by two independent observers who only saw the ideas on paper, but did not see the pitches: "Having only seen the movie pitches in written form, they found the narcissists' ideas to be about as creative as proposals from non-narcissists. The difference, the researchers say, was in the pitch itself: narcissists were more enthusiastic, witty, and charming--all traits, according to past research, that people associate with creativity."

In other words, the live pitches led people to make an attribution error, to confuse stereotypical features of creative people with creative ideas. (This explains, by the way, why creative people who come in bodies that can't pitch need someone on their team to sell their ideas: Steve Wozniak would not have succeeded without Steve Jobs' pizazz.)

The second study bugs me, and even though I don't like it, I am trying to resist rejecting it because it was done quite well. "The researchers composed 4 person teams of various numbers of narcissists: asked them to draw up proposals to improve the performance of real businesses and other organizations. Teams made up of three or four narcissists came up with incremental proposals and failed to generate and discuss many ideas, but so did teams with no narcissists. The teams that generated the most ideas were half narcissist." Senior author Jack Goncalo speculated that this finding may have occurred because: "narcissists can help get ideas on the table. If there are too many of them, however, there may be too many egos in the room, preventing anything from getting done."

As I said, I am not especially happy about the findings of this study, in part, because even if these findings do generalize to the real world, narcissists do so much damage that they still may not be worth the trouble. On the other hand, this research is consistent with more applied and qualitative writings by Michael Maccoby (see this HBR article) that suggest narcissists are high magnitude people, with strong pros and cons. Maccoby summarized this perspective brilliantly:
Leaders such as Jack Welch or George Soros are examples of productive narcissists. They are gifted and creative strategists who see the big picture and find meaning in the risky proposition of changing the world and leaving behind a legacy. Indeed, one reason we look to productive narcissists in times of great transition is that they have the audacity to push through the massive transformations that society periodically undertakes. Productive narcissists are not only risk takers willing to get the job done but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric. The danger is that narcissism can turn unproductive when, lacking self-knowledge and restraining anchors, narcissists become unrealistic dreamers. They nurture grand schemes and harbor the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success. This tendency toward grandiosity and distrust is the Achilles' heel of narcissism. Because of it, even brilliant narcissists can come under suspicion for self--involvement, unpredictability and--in extreme cases--paranoia.

I'd love your reaction to this research and more generally to the notion that--contrary to my biases--that narcissists may at times may be worth the trouble!

Poughkeepsie Journal, November 10, 2010, Wednesday

Copyright 2010 Poughkeepsie Journal
All Rights Reserved
Poughkeepsie Journal (New York)

November 10, 2010, Wednesday

Paterson: Weigh in on climate plan

BYLINE: By, Jacob Fischler

BODY:
ALBANY - Gov. David Paterson released an interim New York State Climate Action Plan on Tuesday and is seeking public comment on it until Feb. 7.

Pending further research and public response, a final report will be released sometime next year. Paterson is leaving office at year's end, to be succeeded by Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo.
The Climate Action Council was a group formed by Paterson a year ago with the intention of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, by 2050, to 80 percent lower than they were in 1990.
The plan will lead to the creation of jobs when solar panels are installed and other energy-saving technologies de-velop, said Peter Iwanowicz, acting Department of Environmental
Conservation commissioner.

"We want them manufactured here and installed here," he said.

The state is mainly focusing on solar, wind and water power to lead the way as new sources of low-carbon or no-carbon energy sources.

Lower greenhouse gas emissions will lead to lower energy bills, Iwanowicz said.

"There is a climate crisis, and there is a jobs crisis, and we must address both at the same time," said Sean Sweeney, director of the Cornell Global Labor Institute.

The Climate Action Council plans to achieve its goal through five main strategies:
• Accelerate the development of low-carbon power sources.
• Improve construction codes.
• Move to low-carbon fuel standards in public transportation.
• Reduce waste on farms.
• Target research toward helping businesses develop low-carbon energy technologies.
Public response
• To read the plan, visit www.nyclimatechange.us/InterimReport.cfm.
• To submit a comment, visit www.nyclimatecomments.us or mail it to Climate Action Plan, NYSERDA, 17 Co-lumbia Circle, Albany, NY 12203.

LOAD-DATE: November 10, 2010

Plain Dealer, November 9, 2010, Tuesday

Plain Dealer

November 9, 2010, Tuesday

Plain Dealer

'Stayin' Alive' by Jefferson Cowie charts how it all went wrong for the U.S. working class

By Bill Eichenberger

When Youngstown Sheet & Tube closed in 1977, the employees simply walked out behind the mill and threw their work gear into the Mahoning River, hard hats, boots and all.

"And all those years of payin' union dues / didn't count for much," in the words of country singer Dwight Yoakam, "when we got our layoff news."

Cornell University historian Jefferson Cowie revisits such moments in his engrossing new book, "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class." He traces the rise and slow descent from 1935, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the labor guarantees of the Wagner Act, through 1982.

Mostly, Cowie focuses his political, social and cultural history on the Me Decade, with particular attention to Dewey Burton, a more authentic and original version of 2008's Joe the Plumber.

Burton worked at the Wixom Ford plant outside of Detroit and customized race cars in his spare time. He was a dyed-in-the-wool union man whose father voted for and adored Roosevelt. By the early 1970s, though, the son had become furious with the status quo.

Pete Hamill wrote a vivid New York Magazine profile of Burton in 1969, headlined "The Revolt of the White Lower-Middle Class." The Michigan workingman would weigh in on national politics several times during the decade, at the end of which he became a "Reagan Democrat."

Burton is joined in Cowie's book by an assemblage of working folk, blue-collar guys -- at the time, in the unions, they were mostly guys and mostly white -- for whom the historian demonstrates great empathy.

Cowie also has an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech. When Jimmy Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley Act in an attempt to break a 1977 strike by the United Mine Workers of America, one miner in West Virginia, writes Cowie, declared, "Taft can mine it, Hartley can haul it, and Carter can shove it."

Because "Stayin' Alive" tells the story of the rust belt, its rise and fall, it is a part of the story of Cleveland and Detroit and Youngstown. When Cowie takes off his historian's hat, he turns to cultural markers to illustrate and promote his argument.

He proves more than a dilettante in cultural matters, not only discussing the obvious: say, Bruce Springsteen or the movie "Norma Rae," but also the importance of director Paul Schrader's "Blue Collar" or the Akron post-punk band Devo.

"For Devo," Cowie explains, "the working class people of Akron were much like the evolutionary disasters in the [sci-fi horror film] 'Island of the Lost Souls.' 'Those mutants were [bleeped] with,' the band explained. 'They looked like people from Akron.' "

He dates the decline of unionism to the 1969 murder of labor leader Joseph Yablonski and his wife and daughter in western Pennsylvania. W.A. "Tony" Boyle, president of the United Mine Workers, was later convicted of ordering the hit on his political rival.

By then, the unions had become largely undemocratic, overly hierarchical, even despotic, Cowie writes. They had begun to fracture from internal fissures and to succumb to external pressure.

Those focuses included the successful lobbying of the Business Roundtable, founded in 1972; the outsourcing of jobs to the developing world; the influx of minorities and women into the labor pool; and, unsympathetic presidents, which included, perhaps surprisingly, Jimmy Carter.

Labor pinned its hopes for relevancy and rejuvenation on the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. But Carter's support of the bill was tepid, and by the time it was signed into law in 1978, it was a laughable shadow of its former self.

By the end of that year, Cowie writes, "one could hear the death rattle of American working-class political power." And as this fall amply illustrates, the working class has never recovered that power.

Bill Eichenberger is a critic in Columbus, Ohio who blogs at thebookserf.blogspot.com

Marketwire, November 9, 2010, Tuesday

Copyright 2010 Marketwire, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Marketwire

November 9, 2010, Tuesday

Sheppard Mullin Adds Five-Attorney San Francisco Labor Group;
Labor and Employment Law Team Continues Firm's Recent Expansion of Signature Practice

BODY:
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP has added five attorneys to the firm's Labor and Employment practice group: partners Ron Holland and Ellen Bronchetti, and associates Paul Cowie, Elia DeLuca and Jennifer Holly. The group joins Sheppard Mullin's San Francisco office from Littler Mendelson's San Francisco office.

"Ron is one of the top traditional labor lawyers and brings with him an impressive national practice. We continue to grow cornerstone practice groups like Labor and Employment and expand our capabilities to better serve clients. Ron and Ellen are a terrific team, and we welcome them to the firm," said Guy Halgren, chairman of Sheppard Mullin.

"We look forward to joining Sheppard Mullin, a top-notch full service national firm with a strong footprint in San Francisco and throughout California," Holland commented. "I am impressed with the firm's marquee labor and em-ployment practice, including the firm's commitment to its continued growth. I am thrilled to continue practicing with the team, including Ellen who I have practiced with for almost a decade."

Holland's practice focuses on traditional labor and employment issues in a variety of industries, including trucking, airlines transportation, technology, entertainment, environmental, recycling and solid waste services. Holland specializ-es in representing clients in union negotiations, organizing campaigns and unfair labor practice proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board.

Holland also has extensive experience handling wage and hour class actions, employment discrimination and wrongful termination litigation. He counsels employers to prevent employee-related problems before they become law-suits by conducting manager and employee training, including ensuring clients' compliance with applicable state and federal
labor laws.

Ms. Bronchetti advises all types of employers, from start-ups to multi-national corporations on all aspects of the employer-employee relationship, including union avoidance, employee classification issues, wage and hour disputes, discrimination complaints, employee terminations, including mass layoffs. A significant focus of her practice is identi-fying and avoiding problems in the workplace before they arise, through compliance audits and development of workplace policies and procedures.

She has represented corporations and small business in union negotiations, organizing campaigns, elections and matters before the National Labor Relations Board and other related administrative agencies. In addition to her tradi-tional labor experience, she has significant experience defending employers of all sizes in wage and hour class actions and multi-plaintiff suits, including claims involving misclassification of employees (including independent contractors), missed meal and break periods, unlawful deductions from employee pay, and improper record keeping. In addition, while Ms. Bronchetti has experience litigating cases involving claims arising under state and federal discrimination laws, especially cases arising under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Holland received a J.D. from Fordham University in 1990 and a B.S. from Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1987. Bronchetti received a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law in 2003 and a B.A. from Boston College in 2000. Cowie received a Bachelor of Laws from Northumbria University in 2001. DeLuca received a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law in 2006 and a B.S. from Santa Clara University in 2002. Holly received a J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 2008 and a B.A. from Santa Clara University in 2002.

Holland and Bronchetti are the latest of nineteen partners to join Sheppard Mullin in 2010. In August, partners Tom Kaufman, Mike Gallion and Gregg Fisch joined the firm's Los Angeles/Century City office from Seyfarth Shaw, as part of an eight attorney Labor and Employment team. Other partners joining the Labor and Employment practice group this year include Jim Hays (New York) from Mintz Levin and Rick Kopenhefer (Los Angeles/Century City) from McDermott Will & Emery.

Sheppard Mullin has 92 attorneys based in its San Francisco office and its Labor and Employment practice group includes 80 attorneys firmwide.

About Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP Sheppard Mullin is a full service AmLaw 100 firm with 550 attorneys in 11 offices located in the United States and Asia. Since 1927, companies have turned to Sheppard Mullin to handle corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions. In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100. For more information, please visit www.sheppardmullin.com.
CONTACT:
Ron Holland
(415) 774-3177

Ralph Richardson
(213) 617-5542

SOURCE: Sheppard Mullin

LOAD-DATE: November 10, 2010

WUFO 1080 AM, November 2, 2010, Tuesday

WUFO 1080 AM

November 2, 2010, Tuesday

WUFO 1080 AM


Art Wheaton was WNY@Work - Your Afternoon Business Discussion's featured guest discussing how manufacturing is alive and Western New York is a great place where great things are happening.

Workday Minnesota, October 31, 2010, Sunday

Workday Minnesota

October 31, 2010, Sunday

Workday Minnesota

Labor law has been ‘turned inside out to help the powerful,’ top historian says

By Mark Gruenberg

U.S. labor law “has been turned inside out, protecting the powerful rather than the powerless” in the 75 years since the National Labor Relations Act was enacted, a top labor historian says.
“And by that standard, it’s a failure,” adds James A. Gross of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Gross was the most provocative of many speakers at the opening Oct. 27 session of a day-and-a-half conference commemorating the 75th anniversary of the NLRA, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on July 5, 1935.

The act was supposed to encourage industrial democracy by making it government policy to back workers’ efforts to organize and bargain collectively, to level the economic playing field and achieve social justice, Gross said. But the GOP-enacted 1947 Taft-Hartley Act and court decisions over the last 75 years negated those goals, Gross stated.

The legislation said its aim was “to promote common justice and economic advance.” Its lead sponsor, Senate Labor Committee Chairman Robert Wagner Sr., D-N.Y., spoke in economic terms, Gross recalled. Wagner argued that giving workers power to organize and bargain would lift their wages and incomes, without federal spending, and such a rise would help haul the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

To give them that power, the senator said, you needed democracy in the workplace – as the NLRA, also called the Wagner Act, envisioned – through union organizing and recognition, by elections or company recognition of pro-union majorities.

But the Wagner Act also had a large human rights aim, Gross said. Both the senator and FDR played that down, to get a then-conservative Supreme Court to rule it constitutional. The court declared the act constitutional, 5-4, in 1937.

Taft-Hartley, court rulings and 30 years of government hostility to regulation in general – starting with the Democratic Carter administration – helped wipe out the law’s impact, Gross said. “The discussion of regulation has been recast in terms of economic efficiency…One economist even calls social justice ‘a form of superstition,’” he noted.

Besides government hostility to regulation, the NLRA failed to meet its goals for other reasons, other speakers said. One is corporate opposition to workers having a say. Another is that the NLRA encourages labor-management confrontation, which Georgetown University law Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow said may not be the best solution for either side in modern society.

Federal appellate Judge Laurence Silberman noted the National Labor Relations Board, which administers the law, changes positions with the change in administrations. That makes judges leery, he said. He also said the law is weakened because “the issues are too understandable to the judges, who react quickly and sometimes viscerally” to NLRB rulings.

Rutgers labor studies Professor Dorothy Cobble said unions failed to some extent by not organizing outside specific industries. But another speaker pointed out that it took creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the late 1930s to even start organizing mass production industries such as autos and steel, outside old crafts.

Several speakers said the fight to enact the Wagner Act – and the economic conditions that produced it – have their parallels today.

Before the NLRA, private sector union density was under 10% and it’s now 7.2%, said Harvard labor economics Professor Richard Freeman. “And then we had goons” breaking unions. “Now we have lawyers,” he added, referring to the union-busting industry, which international organizations say is a $4 billion business.

“We have to strengthen the penalties” of labor law, to deter employer law-breaking, Freeman stated. He said the NLRB “should have more discretion” in setting fines for labor law-breaking, rather than the present penalties of net back pay and posting we-will-not-violate notices. In a case he cited, an arbitrator penalized an Alameda County, Calif., hospital $4.5 million for breaking its union contract.

And the Great Depression gave the final push to the movement for labor law, added Cobble, drawing the parallel with present economic ills.

George Washington University law Professor Charles Craver said the labor movement provides needed “checks and balances” on management. “Lord Acton was right when he said, ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’” If union density keeps dropping, “management would have total power. I’d hate to see what would happen then. But then the workers will again demand a collective voice.”

“It is unusual to focus on an anniversary of an agency by discussing its shortcomings, but it is necessary,” said National Labor Relations Board Chair Wilma Liebman, quoting former federal appellate Judge Abner Mikva in opening the conference. The NLRB and George Washington University organized the event.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

The Huffington Post, October 28, 2010, Thursday

The Huffington Post

October 28, 2010, Thursday

The Huffington Post


Extra Pennies for Women Execs: The Gender Wage Gap Decreases by Four Cents

After studying wages between the years 2000-2007, the Government Accountability Office reported that women at managerial or executive level positions of employment now make 81 cents for every dollar a man in the same position makes, a four cent increase from the stagnant 77 cents that has defined the gender wage gap. Seems like a time to celebrate, right? Not quite.

The extra four cents reflects the growth of women who are entering employment at a higher rate then most men. Unfortunately, this factor has less to do with gender equality than with economic change. During the peak of the recession in 2009, women surpassed men in employment, but this was due to layoffs being the highest among males. Four months before the end of the recession, (estimated at June 2009), men had accounted for 82% of all job losses. The job sectors within the economy that still maintained steady growth during the recession included health care, education, and government positions, all of which have traditionally hired women.

Globally, the number of employed women grew by almost 200 million in the last decade. Yet even as more women are entering the workforce and taking over as breadwinners within the household, women are still more likely to be employed part-time or hold low-wage jobs without health and unemployment insurance. In addition, men still gain more work promotions than women at executive and managerial levels of employment. Corporate heads have pointed to the amount of work output and results each employee is able to produce. Women tend to take off more time from work due to family responsibilities than men, which often leads to men being considered more for pay raises and upper level job shifts. For example, in management positions, if a woman has no children, she actually makes 83 cents on the dollar, compared to the 81 cents for mothers.

With more women trying to handle dual roles both as employees and heads of the household, this should be substantial support for closing the gender wage gap. The point is, women are entering employment more so than men, but with increased financial needs to take care of family obligations, women barely see the fruits of that labor. Sure, four cents may seem like a silver lining to equal wage advocates, but for the rest of the women in the workforce, that increase is non-existent once personal expenses have been taken into consideration. All numbers aside, how gender discrimination contributes to the gap is difficult to measure and has become an invisible exponent in looking into this issue further. Francine Blau, a Cornell University Economist who has studied the gender wage gap for the past 12 years, has speculated over claims that discrimination is no longer the basis for overall pay inequality. "I think discrimination has declined," says Blau. "But I'm not yet seeing or believing that it's been completely eliminated."

It's been over 40 years since pay equality first became a mainstream issue, and women's wages have only increased a half a penny since then? Perhaps we have arrived at a point where the majority of women are settling for the 77 cents. What do you think?

1. Women in Management A GAO Report
2. Rampell, Catherine. "As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in the Job Force". New York Times (5 February, 2009).
3. International Labor Organization. "Global Employment Trends for Women".
4. Miller, Michelle. "Marketing to Women As Employees: Are You Guilty of Gender Bias?" Wonder Branding (29, September, 2010).
5. Fitzpatrick, Laura. "Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men?" Time Online

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