Career Games, the Formal, Contextual, and Operational Rules of Play

Excerpt from Career Games, the Formal, Contextual, and Operational Rules of Play

Take, for instance, the somewhat beleaguered but still widely proclaimed standard operating procedure in many organiza tions to set mandatory retirement dates for employees. Yet, another standard operating procedure exists to overlook such dates when a person subject to them is a prestigious figure within the organization, a troublemaker who might question the legality of such a rule in the courts, or an individual thought to be irreplaceable at the moment. While the rule may well suggest what is to be considered proper conduct in the organization, such conduct is not always smart given the particular situation. The archtype dope is often the one who rather mindlessly insists on playing by the rules without attempting to see them in light of the surrounding conditions. Pity the poor underling who fails in an attempt to oust the Chief Executive Officer of a firm on the basis of a so-called mandatory retirement date.