Speed. Change. Time. LO10299

John Constantine (rainbird@trail.com)
Wed, 02 Oct 1996 08:08:00 -0700

Replying to LO10280 --

Ben,

as Art Kleiner offered,

> They [corporations] descended from monasteries, but the corporate form
>evolved as a means for people to act on a large scale, without being part
>of either government or the church.

I simply don't believe that this is the case. without the premise that
corporations and the corporate form only exist in the west, nor do I
believe that they (corporations) evolved to avoid being part of government
or the church. Each of these is a separate discussion worth pursuing. The
latter issue is what I'm concerned with at the moment.

There are two "angles" on the corporate form (at least two). One is that
it is essentially a military model, requiring differentiation of functions
and levels of leadership, command and control. This is the present
"inanimate" form of the business corporation today. The military model
itself however has been around for millenia. It seems to have survived
simply because it appears to work.

The second is that of "shared risk", pursued by individuals who gave up
their personal rights for the goal of profit/loss with least cost to
themselves personally. Having given up to the inanimate form their rights,
they were not any longer able to dictate the future of the form.
Multinational corporations are the most recent extensions of this form,
not bound by government controls, and with the ability to shift resources
and risks from country to country, region to region, hemisphere to
hemisphere.

What appears to be happening in this age of enlightenment is that
individuals are railing against the coldness of the inanimate, preferring
to deal with the human elements as best they can. As learning
organizations progress, perhaps what we will see happening is increased
tension between the two elements, with the corporation still ultimately
controlling itself despite its management's intentions.

Just a thought or two for chatter's sake.

-- 

Regards, John Constantine Rainbird Management Consulting Santa Fe, NM http://www.trail.com/~rainbird

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>