At risk of going seriously off-thread,
John Constantine wrote:
>..And while it is probably true that you want someone who values
>honesty at the controls of a nuclear power plant, as long as such a
>person
>is capable and knowledgeable enough to perform the needed functions,
>it
>doesn't matter one whit that he/she values anything but a paycheck.
>The
>behavior doesn't have to be uniform, but it does have to be sufficient
>for
>the purpose/function. If everyone having differing values in a nuclear
>plant, or oil refinery, were to have differing values it would not
>change
>the nature and number of critical functions needing to be performed at
>regular intervals. Would it? Must we add a new layer of bureaucracy
>each
>time someone having differing views/religions/habits/behaviors/values
>joins the organization? ...
To which Gary Scherling replied:
>..If all he/she values is the paycheck, the job environment,
>productivity and all the other aspects of a learning organization will
>be majorily impacted. And he/she may be willing to let the nuclulear
>power plant blow up if they decide to committ suicide, if they only
>value the paycheck (which they don't want to receive anymore since
>they don't value their own life at that point)...
And conversation continued.
One of the benefits of corporate capitalism was that we could transact
around a rather finite set of shared values, which made diversity more
tolerable. I do not need to know you for decades; you need not be from the
same town or church. We can conduct business relying on money and basic
frameworks such as contract law. In this context, John's example neatly
summarizes the situation.
Are we saying that advancing to knowledge work and learning organizations
makes this invalid? Do there have to be many more shared values in order
for us to work effectively in the same company?
If so, are there practical limits to this? What happens to those of us who
are only working to finance the rest of their lives? And what prevents me
from using this as a pretext for turning the whole company into a cocoon
of people who mirror my beliefs?
sr
--srojak@ix.netcom.com (Stephen Rojak )
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>