loyalty & individuals
From 50 years ago
What does it mean to be "loyal"?
Many an officer who shipped out to Saigon carried with him a dog-eared copy of “Street Without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946–1954,” published in 1961. In early 1968, when it seemed possible that American forces could be in for a disastrous siege at Khe Sanh, officers scrambled to get their hands on “Hell in a Very Small Place,” Fall’s searing account of the siege at Dien Bien Phu, 14 years earlier, in which the French suffered the decisive loss in their own struggle to control the country.
Bernard Fall: The Man Who Knew the War | Fredrik Logevall
You don't have to watch this unless you wish to, but we might touch upon some aspects of it in conversation
The French Foreign Legion celebrates the battle of Camaron Sidi bel Abbès, 1957.
If you do watch it, ponder where it was filmed, what was about to happen in the short years thereafter, and whether loyalty is always a good thing.
things we'll talk about
- why is loyalty in members a valuable commodity for organizations?
- what kinds of things would motivate you to be loyal to an organization? what would it have to do to win your loyalty?
- what do you think about the increase in turnover of IT professionals?
- does the idea of working at several companies over the course of your career worry you?
- would you prefer it to working at one company over most of your professional life?
We'll do an in class exercise
let's read this together in class
Fall, B., 1961, Street without joy, pp. 291-294
Your groups will report back on what this passage meant to them in terms of the topic of this session.
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