Review of Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly.

Reviews the book, Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly by Herbert M. Lefcourt (see record 2000-14400-000). Lefcourt traces the changing concerns of psychology, and the reason why the psychological study of humour has often been trivialized as an unlikely candidate for research support in the past. The author charts his own personal odyssey in the field, one in which he is drawn to the study of human strengths rather than human frailties. An early chapter sets us up for the remaining chapters by reminding us how we experience humour in everyday life. Verbatim anecdotes from students in previous seminars offer vignettes which allow the reader to grasp the situation vicariously and to see how and why the humour of the situation could have arisen. It is here that Lefcourt confides that his is a functionalist psychological perspective, and that he views humour as a characteristic that has been useful to our species. Here one comes to the crux of the argument for most readers. Is humour, then, a coping strategy, ultimately devised in our evolutionary ramblings, as a protective cushion against the jagged impact of stressful experiences? The middle part of this book explores this hypothesis in a variety of experimental settings, all designed to assess the moderating role of humour in the face of stress. This is a useful, even uplifting, book about the human search for emotional well-being. Its academic value in outlining the history and current thrust of work in the field of humour is obvious, but this reviewer appreciated its bold attempt to provide a more personal view of human adaptation to life's stressful requirements. Very simply, this is a book that resonates with one's understanding of life beyond the research laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

网络世界的发展与挑战

不管你今天是不是网络用户,明天你肯定会上网。 “人类进入21世纪,网络将无所不在。”3COM董事长Eric Benhamou先生所描述的未来理想的网络世界令人憧景。然而,现实确不能让人浪漫。网络领域众多技术瓶颈和纷争使今天的用户还有许多不便。但是,理想与现实的差距恰恰是厂商发展的机遇。近日来京的3COM公司资深副总裁Alan J.Kessler先生在接受记者采访时谈到了未来的网络市场和技术发展趋势,以及网络厂商所面临的挑战。     

A holistic control philosophy for the process industries

The objective of this paper is to give a holistic picture of the economic control as part of the management function in the process production organizations. The systematics described is a three dimensional life cycle model of the systems development. The first dimension defines the levels of decision making in the organization. The second dimension describes the various functions of the production organization and the third dimension formulates different abstraction models of the system in question.     

In Search of Organisational Creativity: The Role of Knowledge Management

Contemporary management theories lead to systematic practices that appear to limit the creative capacity of any given organisation. Often there is a closed system paradigm, when in reality organisations are open systems. A desire to seek a rational way of operating is not necessarily negative, but gives priority to mechanisms and results over processes or contents. Drawing on practical experiences in architectural design within the construction industry, we point to approaches that inhibit the emergence of creativity in an organisation, and which can be harmful from the business point of view in the long run. It is suggested that one way to overcome these difficulties lies in improvements in knowledge management.