I like the thoughts that Ben and others have created in this thread.
Although you are talking about the USA, a lot of what has been said
applies also to the UK. I have one thought in general:
"Capitalism doesn't work"
What I mean by this is that the current economic system prevailing in the
West over the last hundred years or so cannot provide the stability that
many of us seek in our lives and communities. Unfortunately no-one has
come up with a better system which has been successfully tested in the
real world, so we are left living and coping with instability.
The question then arises that if this is true, does this mean that all our
work at a corporate level within the economic system is just dealing with
symptoms rather than changing anything which is going to decrease
instability.
This may be all we can do - economics as chaos theory - but it can explain
why each new management approach runs up against the buffers and is then
discredited in popular business culture because each management approach
deals with symptoms, not the fundamental problem.
I once asked Peter Senge if the Kaizen work we do at shopfloor level was
worth doing if we did not get to the systemic nature of some of the
problems. His reply was suitably yes and no - we have to do something,
but we should also be aware of the systemic nature of problems.
My thoughts about the above scenario are similar - we have to do
something, but not kid ourselves that we will solve the basic problem of
creating a stable economy through LO or any other work which does not
entail basic economic system changes.
Does this speak to anyone?
Thanks
Malcolm Jones
prodeuro@atlas.co.uk (Malcolm Jones)
--prodeuro@atlas.co.uk (Malcolm Jones)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>