IESG restructuring (Re: Example of the One Liners out of context)

[Daniel O. Awduche]

In the organizational setting, "politics" generally refers to
'activities taken to acquire power, influence, and other capabilities
to obtain one's preferred outcomes in situations where there is
disagreement or uncertainty about choices...'

Cheers,
/Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: problem-statement-bounces at alvestrand.no
[mailto:problem-statement-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Keith
Moore
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 4:28 PM
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Cc: randy at psg.com; problem-statement at alvestrand.no; ekr at rtfm.com;
moore at cs.utk.edu
Subject: Re: IESG restructuring (Re: Example of the One Liners out of
context)


> But what an engineer who says he "hates politics" means is, I think, 
> more often related to an image of "politics" where the underlying 
> logic is that of  splitting a fixed-size pie; in order to win, I have 
> to make someone else lose; if someone else benefits, it means that I 
> have less.

I've always thought of engineers' hatred of politics as a distaste for
some of the practices considered necessary in political activity in
order to accomplish what needs to be done -- such as pretending that
things are different than they really are in order to avoid offending
some powerful person or group, or manipulation of people and groups
using power, coercion, propaganda, ego-stroking, etc.  None of which
means that you can't end up with a win-win situation, but the dishonesty
inherent in such practices makes it difficult to see what a win-win
situation might look like.