Interesting list John - and interesting ideas from Ben, Ben's dad and
Malcolm.
I especially resonated with your eighth of three points John:
"An eighth might be the belief, despite all evidence to the contrary, that
corporations are human entities, and as such can and should be dealt with
as if they were people. When the corporation (a non-human entity) chooses
to increase profits by lopping off a division here or there, cutting
40,000 or 100,000 jobs, it is not doing so on the basis of its humanity.
This is not a family we are dealing with, although it sounds nice in
corporate publications and press releases."
IMO Tom Lloyd put it well in his 1990 book 'The *NICE* Company' when he
argued that we will not understand corporations until we see them as
literally an alien species. He says the first our own species has
encountered though I believe a similar case can be made for other forms of
organisation.
If you adopt this perspective on the world we have currently created a
society where corporate evolution follows its own rules, for the good of
the corporate species, which may or may not serve humanity or society.
Very little in the way of countervailing power, or societal value systems
in use currently checks that evolution. So John I agree. It is time we
woke up to the fundamental non humanity [or non human] nature of
companies.
Anybody else?
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>