Rory Ridley-Duff

Penny Layton is the Head of Personnel at her corporation and not long on the job. She gets a complaint about sexual harassment concerning an employee named Mike who has been the sale rep of the year for a number of years.

After meeting with Mike and hearing what he had to say, Penny and her superior decide to give Mike a lateral transfer so the employees would know that sexual harassment isn't tolerated but Mike would not have a loss in income becuase this was the first complaing against him.

After the transfer, a number of the employees in Mike's old unit ask to go with him to his new unit and Penny talks to Mike again. She informs him that the complaint didn't come from the female employee but another person in his unit. Mike tells Penny that this is because that employee didn't know the entire situation and that Penny acted too soon without knowing the facts.

Penny meets a man named John who has studied human relationships in the workplace hand he tells her that it is often the woman who instuitues the first advance and that she may have judged Mike wrong.

Penny tries to remedy the situation and eventually begins to have feelings for him herself.

A nice story with a good message.… (meer)

Bleh! This is a hard book to review. Frankly, I didn't like the book, however, I liked some aspects of it. The main character is a self-absorbed woman, in a position of authority, who makes some of THE worst choices, and behaves very badly. Yes, she does manage to grow before the end of the book, but it's too little too late, for me.

The aspects of it I liked were about sexual harrassment/sexual stereotypes that caused me to stop and rethink some of my own attitudes and "assumptions."

Additionally, I disliked that there was so much white space in the book. For example, there were a majority of pages with no more than 9 or 10 sentences on them. What a waste.

I won't look for more novels from this author, BUT if he were to write a non-fiction book dealing with sexual stereotypes, I might give that a chance.… (meer)

This is an exercise in reflexivity, critically evaluating my own work for the benefit of others. The way this book came into being may interest readers as much as the book itself. Embroiled in a 3 year study of workplace democracy, the importance of gender dynamics continually surfaced until - with the encouragement of fellow academics - a decision was made to change the theoretical contribution of my doctoral thesis. This book is *not* the thesis. It is, however, a popular style examination of the data and issues that pervaded the study, and presents some of the theory that will mark my contribution to the gender debate.

In short, the book examines a range of issues related to organisation behaviour from the perspective that occupational segregation and norms of sexual behaviour are influenced more by the patterns and processes of attraction than domination. Domination does occur, but only during periods of serious relationship breakdown (which occurs far less frequently than attempts to develop attraction).

The book, therefore, provides partial support for feminist claims by recognising and validating some of the social relations that develop in the workplace, but also provides a critique of feminism by illustrating the extent of women's power to control men, and the techniques they deploy.

My hope - and this is for others to judge - is that this work will change the bedrock on which future gender theory will develop, and encourage a more inclusive (and less stereotype driven) debate about men's and women's power. If there is a weakness (for me) it is that I would have liked to spend more time broadening my reading before concluding the book. This will be addressed in future books and academic articles.… (meer)