Two excellent sources are Moral Mazes [0] and Peopleware [1]. Moral Mazes is a principled and academic study of how managers believe ethics and morality work wi

Two excellent sources are Moral Mazes [0] and Peopleware [1]. Moral Mazes is a principled and academic study of how managers believe ethics and morality work within systems of bureaucracy, and how this differs from the ethical expectations of subordinates and citizens who then have to develop their own rationalizations for how to fit into bureaucratic apparatuses, which they depend on for their livelihood, while compromising away what they believe to be basic and unalienable humanity-affirming principles in order to conform to business expectations. It uses qualitative data from a longitudinal survey in which the author gathered interviews from employees at all levels of corporate hierarchy over a period of years from several different (anonymized) companies in the 80s. I really wish Moral Mazes was required reading in college. It would have helped me prepare for the shocking business world dysfunction that awaits virtually every employee, in every field, after graduation. Peopleware is a classic within specifically software management, and deals with many of the same human-affirming principles that you see in Moral Mazes, but deals with them in formats that are specific to software. There are a lot of connections between the two books, but the connections haven't been well formalized as far as I know. I love these two books because as you read them the slow feeling of horror comes over you as you see the true diff between how companies operate and how a company should operate if it is to maintain even the tiniest degree of humanity-affirming ethical commitment or even the tiniest degree of genuine concerns for (even from a market competition point of view) how productivity should be marshaled for general human progress. I find there are more or less two types of reactions. Some people read them and go, "Yep. I've seen all that. No surprises here. Oh well, back to work." and just don't care because they just want to focus on local instrumentally rational actions even if it means participating in what is making the entire concept of employment so shitty. Some other people read them and find that it makes their soul glow again a little and they have a hard time ever fitting back into a company now that they have some formalized tools for recognizing how shittily they are being treated at all times. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project... Also a good popular article drawing on Moral Mazes: < http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality-of-systemic-evil/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality... >.