The Gastonia Gazette from Gastonia, North Carolina • Page 14

Business also has rituals By JOHN CUNNIFF NEW YORK If President Nixon and Chinese officials had not been photographed shaking hands the world would have wondered and speculation would have spread that there was a reason behind the omission. That's because handshaking is a ritual. Originally, an outstretched hand was meant to prove the absence of arms. Acceptance of the hand was evidence of a similarly peaceful attitude. But while the original intent may have passed with time, the ritual of the handshake remains alive.

It suggests a common purpose that is communicated rapidly. And to decline a handshake indicates the opposite. Aaron Levenstein, professor of management at Baruch College uses this llustration to remind members of the business world, where rituals abound, that rituals are loaded with meaning and must be respected. On the other hand, many rituals persist without meaning and not only shouldn't be respected but should be eliminated as quickly as the dishonest employe is fired, because both have the same effect on profits. Watch your rituals, businessmen, or you're in trouble.

A live ritual can cause troubles it you don't understand it. A dead ritual can kill you. Among the live rituals, Lc- vcnstcin uses the illustration of collective bargaining in which, he says, "union and management go through a conflict performance, like a ritual dance." USEFUL RITUAL Ritual is repetitive behavior, says Levcnstcin in "Interaction," a management psychology letter published by the Organizational Behavior Institute, lhat performs useful functions, such as: us what to expect and helping us cope with the unfamiliar. the social cement that makes it possible for people to work together in a common undertaking. time and preventing misunderstanding by communicating basic aU.il.udes quickly.

But a lot of executives, he finds, get into serious trouble because they fail to understand ritual or because they rituajize activities and forget the original purpose. Corporate directors-, for example, often into the habit ol routinely performing their questioning or probiRjK feeling that by merely'going through the ritual help secure the company's future. A current consideration: Since wages are restrained, should you drop the ritual of the performance review, which originated when it was possible to give sizable merit increases? At your own risk, says Levenstein. It's still a live ritual. "The ritual gives the employe a sense that somebody is interested in him as an individual.

In this way the ritual is still doing a job. Don't discard it." THE GASTONIA GAZETTE, March 6, Two-site chess match accepted MOSCOW 'AP) The Russian Chess Federation indicated Saturday it would agree to two sites for the world championship chess match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky. The indication came in a letter which the Russian federation handed to Dr. Max Euwe. president of the International Chess Federation.

Euwe came to Moscow to try to break an impasse over the location for the championship match. The Soviet news agency Tass reported that the Soviet federation said in the letter it is "ready, in principle, to discuss conducting the first half of the match in Belgrade and the second half in Belgrade is in Yugoslavia and Reykjavik is in Iceland. The Russians had said Spassky, the defending champion, had objected to playing all the games in a European city with a hot climate in summer. In their letter the Russians said the games should begin in Belgrade no later than July 1. Spassky had picked Reykjavik as his first choice.

Fischer had selected Belgrade because it had made the top money offer of $152,000 to host the match. The championship match will be 24 games. today's FUNNY i 6RANP CANYON is THEIASTOF SP10NDORS 0 tr Inc. HARRIS-TEETER SUPER. MARKETS PRICES EFFECTIVE THROUGH SAT.

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