Case Study #5: Bartleby, the Scrivener, a Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
Ken Nichols

“Bartleby” is the name of the principal character in Herman Melville’s short story about the relationship between a manager and an employee. Bartleby is the employee. His job is to be a scrivener, or a copyist.The setting is a small law firm on Wall Street a century and a half ago — long before computers and photocopy machines, or even typewriters and carbon paper. A scrivener’s job was to copy a document clearly and accurately using the information technology of the day: paper, a bottle of ink, and a sharpened quill.You’ll find that the office technology may be different now than it was in Bartleby’s time, but people are much the same as ever. As you read this story, ask yourself what kind of employee Bartleby is. What kind of boss does the attorney make? Does the story have to end the way it does?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2110474
Author(s):  
Pedro F Bendassolli

Work is a semiotically oriented activity, that is, when working, individuals anticipate aspects of their activity using a network of signs and meanings and project themselves in time with the aim to achieve certain goals. This study proposes a discussion on the relationship between purpose and work and distinguishes purpose as objective, related to actions aimed at goals, and purpose as a glimpse or a hyper-generalized sign. Both of these purposes are related to other dimensions of an individual’s relationship, with their work that are not contained in their actions aimed at situated ends. From a methodological viewpoint, the arguments are developed based on the analysis of two fictional characters, inspired by the cultural psychology of semiotic orientation: Sisyphus, extracted from classical literature, and Bartleby, the scrivener of the novel of the same name written by Herman Melville. Based on this analysis, we propose considering the purpose–work relationship on two axes: (1) what articulates sense-meaning in the process of meaning-making, and (2) the axis of action potency and its relationship with the concepts of emptiness and contingency based on a human agent’s experiences in culture. The paper aims to contribute both to the cultural psychology of semiotic orientation and to the literature on the meaning of work.


2012 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Antonio Goncalves ◽  
Natália Serra ◽  
José Serra ◽  
Pedro Sousa

In this chapter the authors show, by using a case study, how it is possible to achieve the alignment between business and Information Technology (IT). It describes several phases of project development, from planning strategy, enterprise architecture, development of businesses supporting tools and keeping dynamic alignment between the business and the IT. The authors propose a framework, framed under an enterprise architecture that guarantees a high level of response to the applications development or configuration as improves its alignment to business by solving some limitations of traditional software development solutions namely: difficulty in gathering clients requirements, which should be supported by the applications; difficulty to connect the organisation processes used to answer the client, which must also be integrated in the applications and the difficulty to develop the applications that can follow the business cycle. To test the approach, this was applied to a real case study consisting in the configuration of an application that manages the relationship with the clients.


Author(s):  
Wita Wojtkowski ◽  
Marshall Major

The focus of this case study is a successful regional law firm (an information intensive enterprise) that integrates information technology to improve the timeliness and quality of their work product. The firm uses information technology as an efficient and productive tool allowing them more time to understand their clients’ needs and envision where their businesses will be tomorrow. Their information services professionals evaluate new technologies with an eye toward improving delivery of legal services: the goal is to build an atmosphere where complex business is handled with ease. In this case we explore the issues related to the implementation of an enterprise portal. The issues are both technological and behavioral.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Leily Ziglari ◽  
Burhan Ozfidan ◽  
Quentin Dixon

<p>Twenty-five years ago, Schegloff (1989) proposed that repair is the most crucial factor in understanding the nature of language development. By observing and examining the repairs children make, not only can we understand repair organization, but also children language development and cognitive stage. Research in syntactic structure of repair, self-initiated self-repair (SISR) or other-repair have gained enough attention in recent years through the works of Forrester (2008), Radford (2008), and Morgenstern, Leroy, &amp; Caef (2013). Some studies analyzed both self-repair and other-repair (Morgenstern et al., 2013; Salonen &amp; Laakso, 2009; Forrester, 2008), whereas a few other studies analyzed only other-repairs from the perspective of parents (Huang, 2011). There are many studies done regarding the incidence of self-repair over other-repair (Schegloff et al., 1977); the relationship between repair and turn (Schegloff, 1988); corrective feedback (Laakso &amp; Soininen, 2010); other-repetition (Huang, 2011); and adult’s self-repair (Laakso &amp; Sorjonen, 2010). However, there is some inconsistency in their findings. The data for this study comprised four video-recorded adult-child interactions at a children’s home in various interactional activities (role-play, short story, or watching cartoons. The purpose of this study is to examine the incidence of self- and other-repairs in the language acquisition process of Persian children and to investigate if there is a relationship between child’s self-repair and adult’s other-repair.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ada Scupola ◽  
Hanne Westh Nicolajsen

Although enterprise crowdsourcing systems that aim to harness the collective intelligence of employees for innovation purposes are proliferating, little is known about how they may impact organisations and their culture. To shed light on this problem, this paper conducts a case study to investigate an engineering consultancy's efforts to implement an internal crowdsourcing as part of an effort to change the innovation culture of the organisation. Taking the starting point in the literature on the relationship between IT and organisational culture and enterprise crowdsourcing, this paper underscores the interplay between innovation culture and information technology. The study finds that enterprise crowdsourcing systems can contribute to small changes of the innovation culture of an organisation along several cultural determinants, including behaviours that encourage innovation, communication and knowledge sharing, employees' relationships, support mechanisms, and strategy.


Kilat ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-35
Author(s):  
Redaksi Tim Jurnal

Strategies and policies in a profit-oriented organization also have a social mission (public service) that prioritizes the service to the customer. The development of information system and information technology will impact on a competitive competition. This development also applies in the world of certification that requires the manager to build and develop information system to help the business activities, to achieve organizational goals and services for stakeholders, especially those which related to data, information, technology and application. We found some cases of information system management failure in achieving organizational objectives because the utilization is not in accordance with the direction and objectives of the organization. The system will analyze the relationship pattern of goods towards the goods order based on needs and usage. Furthermore, the patterns will be recognized so that we can obtain the composition set of criteria to order the goods. To find the patterns and information from a collection of reservation data into a decision-making material. Therefore, the writers make a study with the title "Implementation of K-Means and K-Modes Methods in Clustering Data Mining in Determining the Textile Material Ordering Set" (Case Study: UD. HO KIKU)


Author(s):  
Estefanía Sánchez Auñón

El Romanticismo fue un movimiento extremadamente influyente que surgió a finales del siglo 18 y que tuvo un gran impacto en varias áreas, incluida la literatura. Innumerables escritores han representado en sus obras características esenciales del Romanticismo como la representación de horror y emociones intensas, el uso de entornos naturales exóticos y salvajes, el nacionalismo, el individualismo, la mente humana, y el simbolismo, entre muchas otras. En este artículo, se muestra cómo el Romanticismo influyó, en concreto, la narrativa breve norteamericana analizando cinco obras: “Rip Van Winkle,” de Washington Irving; “The Minister’s Black Veil,” de Nathaniel Hawthorne; “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” de Herman Melville; y “The Minister’s Black Veil” y “The Tell-Tale Heart,” de Edgar Allan Poe. Los resultados que se han obtenido de este análisis han demostrado que estas cinco historias breves se pueden considerar trabajos románticos porque reflejan múltiples características del Romanticismo. De hecho, estos autores retratan las peculiaridades de los dos sub-campos más importantes del Romanticismo Americano conocidos como “Romanticismo Claro” y “Romanticismo Oscuro.” Romanticism was an extremely influential movement which flourished at the end of the 18th century and which had a huge impact on various areas, including literature. Countless writers have represented in their works key Romantic features such as the depiction of horror and intense emotions, the use of exotic and wild natural settings, nationalism, individualism, the reproduction of the human psyche, and symbolism, among many others. In this paper, it is shown how the Romantic Movement influenced, more specifically, the North American short story by analysing five works: Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The results which have been obtained from this analysis have demonstrated that these five short stories can be considered as Romantic works because they reflect multiple characteristics of the Romantic Movement. In fact, these writers portray the peculiarities of the most important subfields of American Romanticism, which are known as “Light Romanticism” and “Dark Romanticism.”


Author(s):  
Wita Wojtkowski ◽  
Marshall Major

The focus of this case study is a successful regional law firm (an information intensive enterprise) that integrates information technology to improve the timeliness and quality of their work product. The firm uses information technology as an efficient and productive tool allowing them more time to understand their clients needs and envision where their businesses will be tomorrow. Their information services professionals evaluate new technologies with an eye toward improving delivery of legal services: the goal is to build an atmosphere where complex business is handled with ease. In this case we explore the issues related to the implementation of an enterprise portal. The issues are both technological and behavioral.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Urie

In keeping with the spirit of American Studies, this article engages in an interdisciplinary examination of Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (1853). Employing a broad literary-critical-historical methodology that also incorporates cultural and social theory, I sociohistorically contextualize “Bartleby” and demonstrate how this stylistically innovative short story anticipated later works of modernist, existential, and postmodern literature. Now internationally renowned as a classic of American literature, “Bartleby” is of interest not only for its historically innovative style––which continues to resonate with contemporary readers––but also for how it potentially serves as Melville’s self-reflexive meditation on his then declining literary career.


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