An Examination of How Playfulness Can be Used to Enhance Corporate Culture and Increase Organizational Effectiveness

This inquiry considers the social psychology dimension of organizational behavior by examining how play influences corporate culture. It asserts that by thoughtfully introducing playfulness into the work setting, any entity can experience a transformation that improves overall organizational effectiveness. With a current business climate characterized by economic globalization, sociopolitical upheaval, and intense competition, enterprises must rely on internal human capital to remain viable. Thus, the origins, forms, and functions of play provide a broad and diverse framework that ultimately leads to the description of such organizational play behaviors as celebrations, rituals, and ceremonies. To establish a business context for the study, the development of modern management philosophy is traced from the earliest classical school ideologies to the most contemporary integrative approaches. Managerial manipulation of play can potentially generate such undesirable consequences as corporate cultism, intellectual stagnation, or widespread cynicism if work dominates and intrudes upon employees\u27 private lives. Conversely, the more desirable outcomes of boundless creativity, unfettered innovation, and coordinated teamwork have a higher probability of flourishing when structural rigidity is loosened with the introduction of play into the workplace. In the latter scenario, companies can reap the tangible benefits of improved profitability, longer employee retention, and increased sales. The findings of this descriptive review strongly suggest that organizations can become more adaptive and responsive to constantly shifting marketplace demands when their corporate culture is enhanced and strengthened through the integration of work and play

Mending Broken Soldiers: the Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs

Prostheses for Amputated Limbs Guy Hasegawa is a well-respected historian of Civil War medicine and a practicing pharmacist. He received his Pharm.D. from the University of California at San Francisco as well as advanced training at the University of Illinois at Urbana (the alma mate...

Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America

Mothering the maimed Women overcame wartime conditions to heal soldiers One reads this book with mixed feelings. The reader appreciates the massive research in original sources. The author has determined the exact number of black and white female workers in individual hospitals o...

Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War

Examining the Role of Disease and the Civil War The shelf of important Civil War books has become the Civil War wing of the library. How can anyone come up with anything new? A change of viewpoint always gives a more panoramic sweep. We can compare the viewpoints of the North, fight...

Correlates of Manifest Anxiety in a Modified Stroop-Type Color-Word Interference Test and a Letter Transformation Task

Psycholog