I‘m in Boston at a conference called Future of the Corporation. The issue of corporate social and environmental responsibility and sustainability is part of my mandate in my new job, so this trip was both personal and business for me.One of the speakers was David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World. Like me, Korten seems to vacillate between optimism and pessimism of the issue of corporate reform. He lamented that overconsumption and overpopulation were essential to unsustainable corporate success, and were fueling their power, and said corporate charters needed to change from a focus on private advantage to public responsibility. I spoke to him briefly at the cocktail reception, and he seems to have been co-opted into the prevailing worldview of US progressives that corporatism and its abuses can be reined in with sufficient collective citizen will. Though perhaps as a professor he has no choice — it may be just a brave public face.
The dinner speaker was Robert Kuttner, founder of American Prospect and a Boston Globe columnist. He confirmed my thinking about the vulnerability of the US dollar and the excesses of the deregulated financial markets. His position is well articulated in this article. Other interesting speakers included:
I also especially enjoyed conversations with John Elkington of SustainAbility, Andrea Moffat and Anne Kelly of Ceres, Majorie Kelly of Tellus Institute (event organizers), Christine Moore of Austria’s Credo organization, and Marc Le Menestrel of U Barcelona. As usual, the most value from the conference came from corridor and unscheduled discussions. Peter Senge co-hosted the meeting, but did not present; there was no mention of Presence at this session, nor were its principles particularly evident in Peter’s facilitation. Highlight of the event, as I expected, was the opening address by Charles Handy (pictured above), whose writing has been so instrumental to my thinking about natural entrepreneurship. His comments focused on three main themes:
He was telling us, I think, to be aware of these realities and not be idealistic in understanding the challenges of achieving change (and the impossibility of ‘imposing’ it), and the importance of creating a level playing field to encourage corporations to self-reform without fearing competitive disadvantage when doing so. I had the chance to give him the outline and set-up chapter of my upcoming book, so perhaps you’ll see his name on my book-jacket. I don’t think many of the presenters and attendees really ‘got’ Handy’s points, which was a shame. There’s a terrible propensity I’ve noticed among US progressives to reassure each other instead of admitting how serious a problem is, to mistake consensus for action, and to overrely on the emergence of some ‘leader’ to take America out of the darkness of corporatism, conservatism, and irresponsibility. The non-US people I spoke to almost all seemed to note this, and felt the result was unwarranted optimism and a lack of substantial intention to actually do anything. Notwithstanding that, it was a great networking event, and attracted an extraordinary mix of very bright and thoughtfulindividuals. Brain candy, and great promise. Category: Corporatism
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All noble ideas Dave but corporations now determine who does and does not get elected and as throttling their power requires action by elected officials it just ain’t going to happen no matter how many angry citizens there are.
Because I have much sympathy with the anarchist viewpoint, I think that:”Nobody willingly gives up power: You need regulation, taxes, enforcement, rewards and mobilization of people to force a power shift”Is simply logically incoherent. You need power for regulation, taxes and enforcement, and the power of government is in service of large corporations – this is just the way it is, and no amount of reform can change human nature with relation to power.Government is not weak, it just has never really been serving most people in its current form – democracy becomes little more than a legitimizing ideology when used on top of a gigantic centralized authority.Corporations are anti-democratic as they concentrate influence into small groups of people, who have the power to influence the small number of people who are given too much power by a meaningless electoral process.This isn’t being cynical, there just doesn’t seem to be any point in hoping to change the world by attempting to influence a corrupt and degenerate political system that is increasingly golbalised.
Because I have much sympathy with the anarchist viewpoint, I think that:”Nobody willingly gives up power: You need regulation, taxes, enforcement, rewards and mobilization of people to force a power shift”Is simply logically incoherent. You need power for regulation, taxes and enforcement, and the power of government is in service of large corporations – this is just the way it is, and no amount of reform can change human nature with relation to power.Government is not weak, it just has never really been serving most people in its current form – democracy becomes little more than a legitimizing ideology when used on top of a gigantic centralized authority.Corporations are anti-democratic as they concentrate influence into small groups of people, who have the power to influence the small number of people who are given too much power by a meaningless electoral process.This isn’t being cynical, there just doesn’t seem to be any point in hoping to change the world by attempting to influence a corrupt and degenerate political system that is increasingly globalised.
oops, too late to correct that typo…
DaveOn a lighter note, I shared the pleasure of seeing Charles Handy speak (along with Tom Peters) at a seminar in Manchester, UK last year and I found his thoughts and insights on the evolution of organisations and society compelling – plus he came across as such a delightful and well-meaning gentleman.Glad you enjoyed seeing and listening to him too.Steve
The future of the corporation?Being dissatisfied with the present state I tried to imagine a better future for the corporation — what would be great to have and what would make economic sense. Then I began to realise that there is only one natural direction corporations can evolve — becoming more like the free market. Moreover, I realised they are already moving along this path.What will be the defining feature of this future corporation? Perhaps that employees will be free to transact with one another, in money (or other) terms, in order to obtain from their colleagues the required inputs for their job and then to earn from what they produced/provided to others. These direct, more personal and natural relations will come to replace the traditional compartmentalised systems for management, control and remuneration that we know from today’s corporations.Now, I don’t call this the “natural enterprise”, I have a different name, but this actually doesn’t matter. What matters is that over time people tend to choose social systems with greater degree of (economic) freedom and expression, so enterprises are guaranteed to move in that direction. So, we shouldn’t worry too much about our future :)
What will be the defining feature of this future corporation? Perhaps that employees will be free to transact with one another, in money (or other) terms, in order to obtain from their colleagues the required inputs for their job and then to earn from what they produced/provided to others. These direct, more personal and natural relations will come to replace the traditional compartmentalised systems for management, control and remuneration that we know from today’s corporations.This “behaviour” and configuration(s) of negotiation-between-acors are increasingly seen in on-purpose networks, and are a key element or aspect of what I call “wirearchy”.