Ownership Cultures
Leon made a really interesting post to his PolitiCorps blog on “Ownership & Cooperation” in democracy a while ago and it struck a chord with my thoughts on business organization.
Leon envisions a country where participation in democracy is like participation in an athletic team. Everyone feels responsible toward their teammates and so puts out their best effort and helps their teammates do the same. This seems to be a common theme in management thinking – a corporate culture that shares ownership is crucial, because it allows managers to harness this community energy. I found it to be overwhelmingly true managing OTL.
But the bigger the team is, the more forceful the shared identity becomes, and the peer pressure can be so effective as to be overwhelming. At that point individuals either bow completely to it or rebel. Trying to imagine the American voting populace as a giant team where everyone looks out for each other just leaves me the image of an overwhelming, totalitarian cult. I think we owe too much to revolutionaries (or at least our sense of community does, ironic no?) to be comfortable with the idea of a Team America (which makes it a good title for a comedy).
Also, team-building tends to require an enemy and conflict (not always violent). There’s a theory that the best corporations don’t worry about their competitors; they focus on outperforming themselves, relying on their culture of ownership for motivation. At any rate, there needs to be some kind of struggle going on, and aside from using an external enemy it seems this must be a religious/cultish zeal.
Now I’m begging the question: what’s wrong with a cult?
Cults erode individual thinking; freedom. But the people in the cult often do feel the sense of ownership and responsibility that Leon was talking about. But they’re being manipulated; they don’t really have control. Ahh, yes, sometimes. And it’s difficult for them to tell the difference.
August 15th, 2005 at 1:33 PM
your idea of team responsibility is interesting, i guess, but ultimately, people need personal motivation to work harder. or more importantly, that working harder is valuable to the well-being of the team, which in turn is valuable to the individual, who will be rewarded personally when the team does well collectively. however, as we all learned from that wonderful movie office space, he knew that if he busted his ass to increase the company stock, he didn’t get paid any more, and so he spent his days working just hard enough to not be fired. ask people who have been in some shitty ass job for a while, and i’m sure they’ll agree with the sentiment.
but what i really want to talk about is how this breaks down even MORE when it comes to mobilizing people who traditionally don’t vote to vote, or even just to give a damn about “team america.” shared cultural identity may be all well and good for middle-class whitey, but he already votes. the real problem with trying to get people to buy into this idea of shared prosperity equals shared gain is that it just ain’t true for a lot of people (i.e. my students) and they know it. when the system has been institutionalized against you, you don’t give a shit about the system (and perhaps rightfully so) and if you do, then you’re either extremely naive or you believe in some sort of trickle-down reganomics bullshit.
now, i’m not saying that people shouldn’t vote or shouldn’t be involved in the system…absolutely they should because ultimately, that’s the most effective way to make yourself heard (at least, when you have no money, that is). take, for example, the growing political influence of recent hispanic/latino immigrants in florida, texas, cali, etc. what i AM saying, though, is that if you want people to work for the team, the team’s gotta work for them, too. this country needs a widespread change in policy from the top down in addition to a change in mindset from the bottom up.
my morals: 1. vote. 2. teach. 3. encourage others to do the same.