Re: <nettime> "Challenging the Tech Companies from Within" via Librarian

Nearly all of us feel at odds with the organizations we work for at one time or another. Managers who are also parents struggle to succeed - and be there for their families - in companies that don't offer flextime. Women and people of color want to make their organizations better for others like themselves - without limiting their own career paths. Environmentally conscious workers seek to act on their values and climb the executive ladder at firms more concerned with profits than pollution.

While many who don't 'fit in' with the corporate culture choose to assimilate or leave, "Tempered Radicals" offers an inspiring alternative. In this provocative book, Debra Meyerson argues that this tension -- between expressing our 'whole selves' and building careers in companies that leave little room for differences -- can pave the way for learning, leadership, and positive change in organizations.

Based on fifteen years of research and observation, "Tempered Radicals" reveals that adaptive, diverse, family-friendly, and socially responsible workplaces are built not by revolutionaries but by those she calls 'tempered radicals' -- people who successfully walk the tightrope between conformity and rebellion:

Whereas 'untempered' radicals use drama and heroics to effect change, these individuals work toward transformational ends with incremental means; and,
Whereas radicals lead episodically, tempered radicals lead every day - with conviction, patience, and courage.

Through stories of tempered radicals from doctors to teachers to CEOs to entrepreneurs, Meyerson illustrates how these 'everyday leaders' stick to their values, assert their agendas, and provoke learning and change without jeopardizing hard-won careers.

Whether one's difference stems from race, gender, sexual orientation, values, beliefs, or social perspectives, this book presents a spectrum of effective responses to the pressure to conform that range from resisting quietly to leveraging 'small wins' to mobilizing others in legitimate but powerful ways.

Putting self-realization and change within everyone's reach, this book shows how to turn threats to our identities into opportunities to make a positive difference in our companies and in the world.

Debra E.Meyerson is visiting Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and at the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization within Stanford's School of Engineering. She is also affiliated faculty at the Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons Graduate School of Management.

https://www.amazon.com/Tempered-Radicals-People-Difference-Inspire/dp/0875849059

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 2:27 PM, Vesna Manojlovic <becha@xs4all.nl> wrote:

Interesting article, about ethics in technology:

https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/challenging-the-tech-companies-from-within/

Some quotes:

"who bears responsibility for creating the technologies that carry clear
dystopian potential?"

"A wave of recent activism from tech company workers has demonstrated
that some of the individuals working for these companies are wary about
what they are being asked to create"

"the message that these activists broadcast loud and clear is: we care.

This is a message which is hard for tech CEOs to make these days,
because they've spent years demonstrating by their *actions* that they
really don't care."

"we are in the present situation because these companies have repeatedly
demonstrated that they aren't particularly concerned with ethics or the
negative implications of their actions."

"the risk posed by these well publicized campaigns is that they distract
from just how bad and problematic these companies truly are by holding
up a handful of employee reformers as the solution"

"these companies can easily take this moment to bow to the pressure from
concerned employees in order to gain some positive progressive PR. ...

but what they're really trying to head off is the mounting public
frustration that could culminate in a genuine push for these companies
to be broken up."

"These stories make these companies seem rebellious and cool again, and
they make it seem like these companies can hold themselves accountable.

But ... it is horridly obvious that these companies are not particularly
interested in being held to account by themselves or anyone else."

"just because it looks like there are a few employees at these companies
who could be our friends, it still doesn't mean these companies are our
friends."

"too many still act as if they do not know that this is where we are
going. This is what happens when complex technologies, and those who
create them, are untethered from a concern with 'collective ends' and
allowed to see themselves as the end that matters. "

"... a larger point that prompts us to consider which people benefit and
which people [and squirrels!] lose out."

*that just isn't good enough*

"if tech workers are serious, they need to refuse to build these things
altogether.

They need to begin the slow and careful work of dismantling these systems"

some things simply should not be built.

"In the present moment those who work to design and create new
technologies need to be seriously considering the repressive potential
of the things they are making."

ps

I am happy to have discovered Ellul though this article!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul

pps it reminds me of that other paper: "Do Artifacts Have Politics", by
Langdon Winner, cited in my "ethics in tech" presentations:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652

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