The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life

(Princeton University Press) Although many organizations devote substantial resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating employee worth in the workplace, Starks argues that firms would often be better off if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. He examines three different companies undergoing rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and post-communist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank. Ultimately he shows how competing criteria of worth promote an organizational reflexivity, making it easier for each company to deal with market uncertainty. David Stark is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. He is the co-author of Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe .