Articles by Dan Bowling
The Unhappiest Job in America?
The unhappiest job in America, Forbes magazine reports, comes with a six-figure salary, cushy digs, an office assistant on call, expense account travel and a free BlackBerry. Yes, you guessed it, being an associate attorney in a big law firm is the u...
Does Working From Home Make Us Depressed?
Marissa Mayer, whom I praised in Psychology at Work when she was appointed CEO of Yahoo, pulled a fast one on work-life balance types last week when she ended telecommuting at Yahoo. The blogosphere has lit up, with sentiment decidedly anti-Marissa. ...
The Death Lizards Take Over at JCPenney
The Death Lizards are back — those soul-sucking 6-Sigmatized cyborgs from the Consultocracy who skip around corporate America turning decent, if middling, workplaces into something out of a hungover Dante dream. Ron Johnson was named CEO of venera...
What Is Happiness?
Everybody wants to be happy. Books on happiness sell. CEOs want happy workers (or so they say). Consultants peddle happiness. Scientists research happiness. Academic papers on happiness get published. Governments are starting to use happiness assumpt...
The Key to Happiness: Know Your Limitations
There is a great line from Clint Eastwood in the 1973 movie "Magnum Force": “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Eastwood played San Francisco detective Harry Callahan in the movie, brutal but honest, and suffice it to say the man who didn’t kno...
Is Dish Network Really the Meanest Company in America?
According to a recent article in Bloomberg's Businessweek, Dish Network is a mean place. Really, really mean. And I’m not talking about how long they keep you on hold at customer “service.” They are mean to their employees, according to Bloomberg’s s...
10 Resolutions to Be Happy at Work
It is that time of year to make a list of resolutions. Rather than offering the usual - a handful of tepid ideas to tame bad habits, doomed to be discarded by the Super Bowl (be early for meetings, keep my desk uncluttered, work out before breakfast)...
How Not to Be a Crashing Bore at the Office Holiday Party
This is the time of year when you will be flooded with earnest online advice on what NOT to do at your office party. If you follow the tips to the letter (like don’t put on a sombrero and throw down a bunch of tequila shots), you avoid the possibilit...
Should You Use Psychological Testing in the Workplace?
The current focus of Talent Management magazine is on the use of assessments in talent management. This is what Psychology at Work had to say about this topic in November 2011. When I look back on the mistakes I made running HR for a big comp...
No More Twinkies? Say It Ain’t So!
Hostess Brands announced Friday it was suspending all operations and starting the liquidation of its assets in response to a nationwide strike by the Bakery Worker’s Union. Going out of business, in other words. No more Twinkies, Wonder Bread, or Din...
Does Obama Win Mean Big Labor Is Back?
If you are under age 40 and work in talent management there is a good chance you have never dealt with organized labor in the workplace. This could change given Tuesday's re-election of President Obama. Yes, part of your next strategic initiative mig...
Citibank and ‘The Sopranos’
There is one immutable truth to life at the top of the corporate world. Sooner or later you are going to get whacked. Nobody really “retires” anymore; almost every captain of industry sooner or later makes someone mad, runs afoul of a powerful consti...
How Will You Be Remembered?
Chris Peterson, a noted University of Michigan psychology professor, died Oct. 9. The field of psychology over which he loomed is called “positive” psychology." It was informed of his passing with a short LISTSERV message from the founder of the fie...