Scapegoats At Work:

Taking the Bull’s-Eye Off Your Back

 Hear audio excerpts from John's recent interview on Family Talk radio.

Each year, thousands of workers seek professional help for job stress, and many more attempt to cope through alcohol, drugs, angry outbursts or emotional and social withdrawal. Employee turnover, absenteeism, substance abuse and stress claims cost the economy billions of dollars each year, and yet many workplaces have developed a culture which actively promotes all of these ills. This is the culture of scapegoating: a process of identifying individuals then blaming, and punishing them for problems that rightly belong to the larger organization.

Scapegoats At Work is a book about recognizing and combating this process by understanding how the individual and the system act together to bring a myth to life. It is a survival manual for people caught in a scapegoating workplace. It is also a book for workers and managers who wish to develop cooperative ways of dealing with individual differences and to create a working environment that is not only more humane, but also more efficient.

“Have you ever felt unfairly treated, singled out, accused, or blamed at work? This book addresses an all-too common yet rarely discussed workplace phenomenon—scapegoating. Based on their work with casualties of this painful experience, Dyckman and Cutler offer a lucid, engaging, and practical guide through the unfamiliar and treacherous terrain of office politics and power dynamics. Scapegoats At Work can save your job and your sanity.”
Thomas Herington,M.D., Medical Director of the Kaiser Permanente Delayed Recovery Center, S.F. and author of Occupational Injuries.

“Offers an understanding of how and why we blame and creates the challenge to change our values to produce a far better environment to operate in and be successful....This is a must read for all HR Professionals that would like to participate in a successful performance-based organization.”
Bob Redlo, Director of Human Resources Department, Kaiser Medical Center

“Clear writing and clear thinking make this an unusually useful book for anyone working with other people. John and Joe take us step by step through the understanding of scapegoating and on to strategies to oppose it. Their psychological sharpness unfolds in a textured sense of the social world—the place we all really live and struggle.”
Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of The Problem of Evil.

“Scapegoats At Work is a most valuable guide through the land mines of office politics. No one working in an organization, from the lowest rungs to the highest spheres, is immune. Anyone can easily become a victim or a perpetrator…The sound research, convincing evidence and real life examples reported in the book will give you the tools to avoid becoming a target…I wish this book had been available years ago: it would have saved countless individuals and organizations a lot of needless pain and wasted time.”
Isabella Conti, Ph.D., management consultant and co-author of From Power to Partnership.

Related Links

The Scapegoat Society

"Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank" by Robert Fuller