SUMMARY OF BOOK PRODUCTION TO DATE

This is a summary of my book production to date.

This is shared with you as I plan to move into a new iteration of idea sharing. An author, who reviewed my website, has introduced me to new possibilities for networking my ideas. Since networking is not a natural inclination, and since writing is as much as end in itself as anything else, he got my attention.

"Ten years ago I was able to quit my day job and simply write and sell books, and I don't have the range you do."

At his suggestion, I am adding akonboard software so that readers and I can have animated discussions. I am also making contact with radio stations.

"You were made for idea exchange," he offered.

We shall see. More immediately, I will be returning to Iowa September 1 with BB with me until September 9, when she will fly back to Tampa. I will stay as long as there is an interest in my new book, which this author, a former academic, claims was made for senior level and graduate seminar level discussion.

If anyone reading this has access to colleges and universities, please let me know with a name and address of someone I might contact.

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SUMMARY OF BOOKS BY JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.:

Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches:

Aggressive education after WWII has produced professional workers, who continue to be managed and motivated by corpocracy as if nothing has changed. Workers have lost their identity while companies have become 20 or 30 divisions in search of a corporation. In this climate, US markets have crumbled or disappeared. Enter management's union, human resources, with cosmetic interventions (with no loss of power or control by management) that have backfired, turning the workplace into a playground where the dominant culture is comfort or complacency rather than contribution. The answer? Purge dependence on hierarchical management and focus on decision-making at the level of consequences.

The Worker Alone! Going Against the Grain!

Workers are operating without a center or moral compass. The charade of empowerment has changed nothing. Ventilation won't do it nor will pointing fingers. Workers must get off the dime and take charge of work. They have invested heavily in education only to find a disappointing return on investment. Angry and confused, they take downsizing and redundancy exercises on the chin as if they can do nothing about it. This is crunch time. Workers can no longer expect the company to take care of them if they don't take care to see that the company survives. It is time to break through the forces of denial and retreat to expose the workplace naked and launch a structural change in the way workers think and behave.

Confident Selling for the 90s:

Confidence is a matter of how we think. How we think is a product of how we are programmed to think. Too frequently we are inclined to be self-critical rather than self-accepting. If we are self-accepting, which means we don't impose psychological barriers to what we can do or can achieve, then we are likely to see others as they are, potential partners in enterprise, not as we expect them to be, obstacles to overcome. Translated, we see problems as opportunities not restrictions. Whatever your profession, you are selling, and will know you have the key to open new doors to opportunity. You will have a self-image of success because you have made the biggest sale of your life, belief in yourself.

The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend:

To have a friend you must be a friend starting with yourself. We are all authors of our own footprints in the sand, heroes of the novels inscribed in our hearts. Everyone's life without exception is sacred, unique, scripted high drama, played out before an audience of one, with but one on stage. The sooner we realize this the more quickly we overcome the bondage of loneliness and find true friendship with ourselves. Taboo deals with the adverse conditioning which programs a person into giving everyone else the benefit of the doubt, but one's own self. Too long we have worried too much about what other people think but too little about what we think and feel. This has often led to us being our own worst enemy instead of our own best friend.

Six Silent Killers: Management's Greatest Challenge:

Invisible forces have invaded the workplace like social termites only to be discovered when it is too late for damage control. These social termites are six passive behaviors. Disgruntled workers quietly and silently sabotage work by simply showing up for work and doing as little as possible to get by. The cause is clear. The structure of the work is for another time and workforce. Now, knowledge power makes the difference. Power has shifted from management to professional workers but management shows reluctance to recognize the shift employing cosmetic change that only worsens the situation. The book explores these passive behaviors in depth and suggests radical change is necessary if American industry and commerce is to survive in a global economy.

Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leaders and Dissonant Workers:

Leadership has retreated into self-aggrandizement and the cynicism of self-indulgence. It pervades every institution of society. Families have abandon their responsibility for the actions of their children, the church has covered the abuses of its priests, educators have abandoned discipline in the classroom, while corruption in government and industry has become so common as to approach the pathology of normalcy. In this climate, workers have focused on getting rather than giving, on avoiding the consequences of their actions, retreating into technology, while children, students, workers and citizens have been reduced to statistical numbers in computer grids. As a result, society has lost its moral center and compass. People have become things to address, evaluate and manage. This is the essence of corporate sin.

In the Shadow of the Courthouse: Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel:

Imagine growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the century and in the middle of a farm belt industrial community of 33,000, while WWII was raging. No television, mega sports, new automobiles, or manicured lawns. Automakers were making tanks and lawns had been turned into victory gardens. There was radio, movies, high school sports, and industrial league baseball, played by young boys and men too old to go to war. It was a time when the four-faces of the courthouse clock chimed every half hour so no one could excuse being late for meals. It was a working class neighborhood in which both parents were likely to work in one of the many defense industries along the Mississippi River. What sets it apart from today is self-reliance was as natural as breathing.

A Look Back To See Ahead: Our Chronic Culture Viewed from the 1970s:

We are stuck. Today resembles the 1970s with such frightening consistency that it is maddening to think otherwise. Then as now young people fought an unpopular war; social upheaval was in the air; corrupt politicians lied and deceived the electorate; drugs were ruining lives; morality was on holiday; new bigotry and old hatreds were hatching; the automotive industry was in sharp decline; energy was in crisis; a paranoid president hunkered down and became a law unto himself, while Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, wouldn't face them, and left the future up for grabs. The book breaks through our cool façade and canned rhetoric to expose this chronic disease, and ask what we plan to do about it?

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For direct contact, email: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com