Originally published in 1943, this book contains the text of lectures delivered to groups of officers from the army and the auxiliary women's services early in WWII. The lectures discuss the nature of fear, the national factors at play in the creation and sustainability of morale, and the significance of psychological factors in practice in an organized community.
During World War I, when Captain J. T. MacCurdy, a Canadian psychiatrist and Cornell University lecturer, was despatched on a special mission to Britain, he undertook one of the earliest studies of war neuroses. The new factor was the availability of high explosives following Nobel’s discovery of dynamite in 1867 (nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth) and developments thereof such as trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid. High explosives were a boon to the mining and the civil engineer but inflicted terrible injuries on combatants. Shell shock—or, as we would now call it, post-traumatic stress disorder—resulted from extreme experiences on the battlefield, injury, concussion, being buried alive or simply the scale of the slaughter. This book, which was first published in 1943, contains the text of lectures delivered by Dr. J. T. MacCurdy to groups of officers from the army and the auxiliary women’s services early in WWII. MacCurdy, continuing on from his findings during WWI, discusses the nature of fear, the national factors at play in the creation and sustainability of morale with reference to the Allied and Axis powers, and the significance of psychological factors in practice in an organized community. “This intelligent, objective analysis of the nature of the psychological factor in war was intended for the British soldier, but its interest and application are universal.”—Foreign Affairs
“Surprising and remarkable…Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.”—The Boston Globe Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes. A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.
While the morale of an organization is an intangible element composed of feelings and attitudes of individuals and groups, the effects of morale include tangible and extremely important factors such as profits, efficiency, quality, and productivity. Low morale and its costliest indicator, high turnover, can be a tremendous drain on a company's finances. Managers often view morale as mysterious and unpredictable, when in fact it is a measurable, controllable expense. The High Cost of Low Morale explores the underlying causes of low morale and offers you field-proven, practical methods for increasing morale and reducing turnover in your organization.
Morale traces the emergence of a novel and modern concept through which collective conduct was be managed, and its diffusion from the military to other civilian spheres of life during the twentieth-century, when it came to be understood as vital for the democratic management of groups in war and peace.
Military professionals and theorists have long understood the relevance of morale in war. Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein, said, following the battle, that 'the more fighting I see, the more I am convinced that the big thing in war is morale'. Jonathan Fennell, in examining the North African campaign through the lens of morale, challenges conventional explanations for Allied success in one of the most important and controversial campaigns in British and Commonwealth history. He introduces new sources, notably censorship summaries of soldiers' mail, and an innovative methodology that assesses troop morale not only on the evidence of personal observations and official reports but also on contemporaneously recorded rates of psychological breakdown, sickness, desertion and surrender. He shows for the first time that a major morale crisis and stunning recovery decisively affected Eighth Army's performance during the critical battles on the Gazala and El Alamein lines in 1942.
This review and critical analysis of attempts at morale measurement presents the first phase of an investigation aimed at developing an effective means for measuring morale among Air Force personnel. The uses of morale measures as predictors and as criteria are noted, and the implications of each usage for measurement are discussed. The problem of scale dimensionality is analyzed, and studies are cited demonstrating the confusion resulting from erroneous assumptions of unidimensionality. An analysis of low intercorrelations among diverse morale relevance emphasizes notions of dimensional relevance and concept relevance. A review of definitions of morale points out such problems as the equating of job satisfaction and morale, individual and group references, and definitions for which no measurement operations presently exist. The collection of methodologies and conceptualizations which, in effect, constitute the body of morale theory, is reviewed with particular attention to conclusions drawn from factor analysis. These results give a basis for a more exact and complete analysis of the dimensions of Air Force morale.
Italian performance in the First World War has been generally disparaged or ignored compared to that of the armies on the Western Front, and troop morale in particular has been seen as a major weakness of the Italian army. In this first book-length study of Italian morale in any language, Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war. Wilcox analyses and contextualises Italy's notoriously hard military discipline along with leadership, training methods and logistics before considering the reactions of the troops and tracing the interactions between institutions and individuals. Restoring historical agency to soldiers often considered passive and indifferent, Wilcox illustrates how and why Italians complied, endured or resisted the army's demands through balancing their civilian and military identities.
What is Morale Morale is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal, particularly in the face of opposition or hardship. Morale is often referenced by authority figures as a generic value judgment of the willpower, obedience, and self-discipline of a group tasked with performing duties assigned by a superior. According to Alexander H. Leighton, "morale is the capacity of a group of people to pull together persistently and consistently in pursuit of a common purpose".. With good morale, a force will be less likely to give up or surrender. Morale is usually assessed at a collective, rather than an individual level. In wartime, civilian morale is also important. How you will benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Morale Chapter 2: Battle Chapter 3: Carl von Clausewitz Chapter 4: On War Chapter 5: Soldier Chapter 6: Military science Chapter 7: Regiment Chapter 8: John Keegan Chapter 9: Combat stress reaction Chapter 10: Maneuver warfare (II) Answering the public top questions about morale. Who this book is for Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Morale.
Why is it important to rethink the church? Today many leaders focus on how their ministries can be run more efficiently. But the foundational question, according to James Emery White, should be Why do we have this ministry? and then, Why do we do this ministry the way we do? Is it effective? Rethinking the Church helps pastors and lay leaders work through questions that must be answered if a church is to rethink evangelism, discipleship, ministry, worship, community, and the structure of the church. Break old molds, check assumptions, and be sensitive, says White. He uses the language and aims of "seeker-targeted" churches but urges readers not to tie themselves to any model without understanding the individual purpose of their church. Now thoroughly revised and expanded, Rethinking the Church contains more emphasis and key material on how to move from rethinking to transition. White blends biblical reflection and hands-on experience and uses the early church as described in the Book of Acts as the ultimate example.
