Jiri Kolaja

Book Review: Personnel: Absences and Well-Being of WorkersAbsences and Well-Being of Workers. By GadourekI., Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1965. x, 302 pp. n.p.

workman-like prose. It is thus superior to the stilted or pompous approach one often finds in personnel writings. Occasionally, it does have the mark of many college textsthe kind of dignity-cum-folksiness one associates with a really successful scoutmaster, i.e., one feels he is being talked down to by an intellectual inferior-but only occasionally. And, one would only get this impression from reading the text (as a student would) in search of new information, rather than (as a teacher normally does) to check how familiar material is ordered, what is emphasized, and so on. (It raises the question whether most of us apply any aesthetic standards to what students have to read.) There would be little point in discussing literary style in a review were it not that occasional unevenness is directly related to the economics of textbook publishing. By rights, this book should be directed primarily to college teachers in personnel and to business and intellectual historians, with some possible appeal to sociologists. This admittedly small market could read the specialized book which Ling seems well equipped to write without being irritated by the high ratio of expositoryto-analytical content (and the interpretation of some fairly obvious points) which is perfectly well justified in an introductory text. At the same time, one wonders how many business administration students want or need the wealth of information available here. Ling has performed a distinct service in uncovering and relating the major constituents of what finally evolved into modern industrial personnel work. The times, places, and names of the practitioners, theorists, and publicists who contributed to the rise of the personnel field are presented in chronological and topical relation to one another. My own particular hero, Ordway Tead, although mentioned fourteen times, is not quite as well treated as I would like. His pioneering work in job evaluation, a February 1917 article with R. G. Valentine, Work and Pay: A Suggestion for Representative Government in Industry, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, is overlooked in favor of Merrill Lotts work seven years later. But, the important thing is that the ice has been broken. The book is not just a first; it overcomes many of the vexing problems of organizing and relating a complicated array of materials spread over a relatively long period during which rapid change was occurring on many fronts. If you belong to the audience described in the first sentence of this review, you have to read the book to appreciate how indebted we should all be to Dr. Ling.

Aktivnost radnih ljudi u samoupravljanju radnom organizacijom (Participation of Working People in the Self-Government of Work Organizations).

doesnt seriously consider alternative interpretations of the data in this book. Likert is at his best when he is frankly prescribing or speculating, and verges on the humdrum when describing the research. The latter must be forgiven, however; there are literally rooms full of data involved in these descriptions, and anyone who tries to integrate them must be treated with employee-centered tenderness and appreciation. This book is an honest and very important effort to communicate what its author knows (in many senses of the word) about organizations. It is already part of a five-foot shelf of important works in organizational behaviour.