How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife?

JERRY B. HARVEY,well-known author of The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management, is a professor of management science at The George Washington University. He has consulted with business, government, various healthcare services, and the nonprofit sector and has published many articles in the fields of organizational behavior and education.

"Jerry Harvey has the uncanny ability of observing the ordinary yetseeing the extraordinary. His insights are both provocative anduseful, no common combination. Reading this book, you will learn tosee the world through another lens." (W. Warner Burke) "Here are real organizational worlds both terrifying and hilarious,where people say and do things that they don't do anywhere else,and feel things that they don't feel anywhere else, and fortunatelyJerry Harvey is there, too, to record it, reflect on it, and helpus learn from it. Bless him!" (Peter Vaill, professor and holder ofthe Distinguished Chair in Management Education, University of St.Thomas, Minnesota) "A decade ago, Jerry Harvey's Abilene Paradox indelibly entered thelexicon as a metaphor for unproductive group behavior. Now, he'sidentified an equally damaging-and paradoxical-pattern ofindividual self-destruction. And, once again, he offers the sameinvaluable prescription: Tell the truth to everyone?especiallyyourself. Ah, if only this time we will listen." (James O'Toole,author, Leadership A to Z)

• Acknowledgements. The Author. Introduction: It's Not My Dog. Some Thoughts About Organizational Back Stabbing or How Come EveryTime I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints are on theKnife? The Spin Doctors: An Invitation to Meditate on the OrganizationalDynamics of the Last Supper and Why Judas was not theTraitor. On the Ethics of Standing for Something or Sitting on OurDuffs. Learning to Not*Teach. Prayers of Communication and Organizational Learning. This Is a Football: Leadership and the Anaclitic DepressionBlues. What If I Really Believe This Stuff? Musing About the Elephant in the Parlor or "Who the Hell Is ElliotJaques?" On Tooting Your Own Horn or Social Intervention as the Process ofReleasing Flatus in the Confines of Religious Institutions. Ode to Waco: When Bizarre Organizational Behavior Is Concerned, GodWorks in Strange and Mysterious Ways. When We Buy a Pig: The Tragedy of the No-Nonsesne Manager. Afterword: In Memory of Suzanne. Notes. References.