Leading Organizations through Transition or Agent Orange on Trial

Leading Organizations through Transition: Communication and Cultural Change

Author: Sarah J Tracy

This volume addresses the role of communication in cultural change efforts within organizations, especially during periods of transition, mergers, technological innovations, and globalization. Included is a development of the nature and function of organizational cultures, discussion of the role of leadership in providing visions and framing organizational events, investigations of ethical issues, and careful examination of the importance of member involvement in change processes. Specific organizational cases are highlighted throughout. These materials were initially developed as the electronic text for an online course in organizational culture and cultural change as part of an executive masters program at Seton Hall University. The success with this course led to the development of a book to aid students and professionals work with organizational cultural change.

Interesting book: Bread Machine Magic Revised Edition or Chocolat

Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts

Author: Peter H Schuck

Agent Orange on Trial is a riveting legal drama with all the suspense of a courtroom thriller. One of the Vietnam War's farthest reaching legacies was the Agent Orange case. In this unprecedented personal injury class action, veterans charge that a valuable herbicide, indiscriminately sprayed on the luxuriant Vietnam jungle a generation ago, has now caused cancers, birth defects, and other devastating health problems. Peter Schuck brilliantly recounts the gigantic confrontation between two million ex-soldiers, the chemical industry, and the federal government. From the first stirrings of the lawyers in 1978 to the court plan in 1985 for distributing a record $200 million settlement, the case, which is now on appeal, has extended the frontiers of our legal system in all directions.

In a book that is as much about innovative ways to look at the law as it is about the social problems arising from modern science, Schuck restages a sprawling, complex drama. The players include dedicated but quarrelsome veterans, a crusading litigator, class action organizers, flamboyant trial lawyers, astute court negotiators, and two federal judges with strikingly different judicial styles. High idealism, self-promotion, Byzantine legal strategies, and judicial creativity combine in a fascinating portrait of a human struggle for justice through law.

The Agent Orange case is the most perplexing and revealing example until now of a new legal genre: the mass toxic tort. Such cases, because of their scale, cost, geographical and temporal dispersion, and causal uncertainty, present extraordinarily difficult challenges to our legal system. They demand new approaches to procedure, evidence, andthe definition of substantive legal rights and obligations, as well as new roles for judges, juries, and regulatory agencies. Schuck argues that our legal system must be redesigned if it is to deal effectively with the increasing number of chemical disasters such as the Bhopal accident, ionizing radiation, asbestos, DES, and seepage of toxic wastes. He imaginatively reveals the clash between our desire for simple justice and the technical demands of a complex legal system.

This is a book for all Americans interested in their environment, their legal system, their history, and their future.

Library Journal

Agent Orange, a defoliant contaminated by the highly toxic dioxin, has stirred public interest on many levels. Schuck (Yale Law School) brilliantly tells the story of the class action suit brought by thousands of Vietnam veterans against the chemical companies that manufactured the herbicide. He probes deeply into the strategies of plaintiffs' lawyers, the novel defenses invoked, and the sitting judge's role. He not only tells of the legal questions involved and the practical ways they were addressed, but describes the bickering between the veterans' lawyers and the jockeying for preeminence in a case that potentially was worth billions. For general readers as well as scholars, this is a fascinating trip through the complexities of the law and the all-too-human response by all concerned. Daniel LaRossa, Connetquot P.L., Bohemia, N.Y.