Product Description

Since the original publication of this important and controversial book, it has stirred up business thinkers everywhere. Now the landmark work has been updated and expanded (with five all-new chapters) to meet today's continuing challenges to the nation's productivity and morale. "This book offers timely solutions to America's national crisis."--Association Trends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #434791 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author

JUDITH M. BARDWICK, Ph.D. (La Jolla, CA) is a management consultant whose clients include IBM, Eastman Kodak, Monsanto, Exxon, and AT&T. She is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Bardwick is the acclaimed author of The Plateauing Trap, The Psychology of Women, and In Transition.

Customer Reviews

Great book and good read!
A must read for everyone working in the corporate world and should me a mandatory read for those in undergraduate school.

Read this very good book syntopically with Cliff Hakim's 'We Are All Self-Empoyed'!
Danger in the Comfort Zone: From Boardroom to Mailroom: How to Break the Entitlement Habit That's Killing American Business
by Judith M. Bardwick

This is one of the very good books I had acquired while attending a boot-camp for entrepreneurs in the United States during the early nineties. (My copy is actually the earlier edition.) At that time, I had read it very seriously. I had really liked the author's ideas of earning mentality (or habit) vs entitlement mentality (or habit).

The many problems & scenarios which the author had described candidly about the American workplace were not much different, when I compared them with Singapore's. Contemporarily, Singapore's employers had encountered the same dilemma. It was only after the economic recession during the mid-eighties & then the Asian financial fiasco during the late nineties that employees' attitudes, in both the private as well as public sector, had changed tremendously. Likewise, employers' attitudes had also followed suit.

At first glance, the author would seem to have criticised employees but I feel the principal premise of the book is more to urge employees to take charge of their own lives by getting out of the comfort zone & moving into the stretch zone. That is true self empowerment: adopt the earning mentality rather than the entitlement mentality!

Of course, employers would have to play their part to gain employees' confidence & trust. Their 'command & control' attitude in the past would have to change.

Hence, I would strongly recommend readers to read also 'We Are All Self-
Employed: The New Social Contract for Working in a Changed World' by Cliff Hakim. This book was written in the mid-nineties.

I feel the two authors' brilliant ideas gel very well with each other. In fact, their combined work will make more sense when read syntopically. They will help you transform the way you think about & approach your employment in the corporate world.

To paraphrase the latter book: "It will inspire you to move from the role of dependent employee, ever-adapting to survive, to independent-Interdependent worker, ever-creating to succeed. You'll learn to embrace a "self-employed" attitude to achieve the success you have always yearned for. Adopting a "self-employed" attitude will prepare you for the inevitable changes that come with time, & help you create a new definition of success rooted in your own interests, skills, values, & desires. It will help you move from merely surviving on the job to engaging your creativity - embedded in the responsibility symbolized by self-employment - & successfully employing yourself in a way that draws on your talents, interests, & deepest values."

I had really enjoyed reading both books tremendously.

In some way & to some extent, the wonderful ideas from the two foregoing books had consciously as well as unconsciously contributed to my eventual decision to take charge of the second half of my life.

Not even one star. More like negative 5 stars
For those that like using these factors in your labor force I suggest you practice the techniques on someone in your family first, see how it effects them when someone plays with their mind - and I don't mean the family members you aren't fond of. Pick the ones you really care about and apply this strategy on them. I bet you end up getting a divorce or written out of a will or two, and forget about seeing the grand kids at Christmas.

This book sets the labor movement back to the stone age. It is unfortunate for big business that they must rely on humans to lift the corporate bale and God forbid that they have families and feelings.

It is very obvious that the author has never worked on a frontline with some outrageous quotas to make - no breaks, no air conditioning, not allowed to go to the bathroom without permission, and have to sit there without having any personal feelings about the situation. PUT OUT AND SHUT UP. That sums up the whole book.

Use fear? Why not go for a whipping stick like they do in other countries.

Yeah, that's corporate progress. Isn't that how we ended up with EEOC and the Department of Labor in the first place?

Steven Covey ............... look away............Dale Carnegie ...... cover your eyes..............