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Margaret Diddams

Blog

The Peril of “Illumination”

When is illumination, as light shined upon knowledge, no more than sound and fury—signifying nothing? Are there times when illumination is even perilous? I have been on a tear this summer reading books whose copyrights have expired, allowing me to download them for free. I recently read the 1896 novel, “The Damnation of Theron Ware;…
Margaret Diddams
September 9, 2021
Blog

Filling the Well When the Water Runs Dry

The lackluster Department of Labor April jobs report took just about everyone by surprise: the US economy showed a net increase of only 266,000 nonfarm jobs. With the country opening up after the winter’s lockdowns, some estimates projected that the total would be closer to a million new jobs.  Did this mean that the economy…
Margaret Diddams
July 7, 2021
Blog

A Future Full of Living in the Past Progressive(ly)

I recently opened my daily New York Times morning e-mail to these sentences from David Leonhardt: “Good morning. The pandemic may now be in permanent retreat in the U.S.” A good morning indeed. With the changes in the CDC guidelines suggesting easing restrictions on mask wearing outside, and then inside, for those who are fully…
Margaret Diddams
June 2, 2021
Blog

There Is No Wisdom in Looking It Up

We have all heard this from our students: “Why do I have to know when I can just look it up?” Today’s undergraduate students have come of age seeing their phones as an extension of themselves; their sense of self too often shaped in part by their browsing history and the responses to their own…
Margaret Diddams
April 27, 2021
Preface

Editor’s Preface

Having announced my retirement in 2019 after twenty years as a faculty member and administrator at Seattle Pacific University followed by four years as the Provost of Wheaton College, I had assumed that my academic career in Christian higher education had drawn to a close with my retirement in August 2020. However, three weeks before…
Margaret Diddams
April 15, 2021
Blog

Delighted to be a Dilettante

About a decade ago, a first-generation freshman came into my office for her first academic advising meeting. As we talked through her set of classes, I asked her in what she thought she would like to major. With downcast eyes and quiet voice, she told me that she had no idea. In that instant, I…
Margaret Diddams
March 30, 2021
Blog

The Rationality of Irrationality

Back in 1996, my husband and I had a heated debate over the former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s use of the term “irrational exuberance” to explain the bull stock market at that time. He agreed with Greenspan that irrationality was the only explanation for some of the ridiculously inflated price to earnings ratios,…
Margaret Diddams
February 3, 2021
Blog

A Call to Character

During this election season, pundits, pastors, as well as politicians have spoken often about the character of our nation. Last month in The Atlantic, David Brooks wrote about cultivating moral character in the midst of collapsing trust, and more recently Pastor John Piper wrote about the importance of leaders as influencers, observing that the calling…
Margaret Diddams
November 13, 2020
Blog

The Liturgy of Lament for Second-Act Leaders

As an Industrial / Organizational Psychologist, I have spent almost 30 years studying leaders. Not so much leadership theories but leaders themselves. How do they think about being a leader? What motivates them? How do they make sense about being in this role, and how much of their identity is wrapped up in being a…
Margaret Diddams
October 2, 2020
Article

Good Work with Toil: A Paradigm for Redeemed Work

Management research in the disciplines of Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management and Industrial / Organizational Psychology focuses on creating the optimum equ-librium between people and their work contexts. In this essay, Margaret Diddams and Denise Daniels use the Christian themes of creation, fall and redemption as a framework to analyze current management theories, and to…
Margaret Diddams and Denise Daniels
October 15, 2008