The psychopathic enterprise
The recent issue (May 8th 2004) of Economist features an article that looks at companies as if they were human beings. The view is not new. Enterprises have the same status as people in court for a long time already. What is different in the article is the viewpoint. It is not legal or economical, it is psychological.
And that view is quite nasty. A natural person exposing this type of behaviour would be locked away, under heavy medication and subject to emergency counselling. While the findings are particularity scary, there is hope. By applying the psychological view we could tap into the experience how asocial psychopathic individuals can be dealt with. It also would help to define what constitutes a valuable member of society.
You then can apply the basics of the Maslov pyramid and define the framework of future corporate development: survival and growth, care for the own kin, contribution to the community, self actualisation and finally spiritual development.
It looks, as of today, most corporations are stuck on the survival level and not even care for there own kin (read: customers, employees, suppliers) not to talk about thinking of the community (read: the public, the environment).
Sigmund Freud once stated "Man is a beast and needs to be tamed". Thus the question arises how to tame the enterprises?
And that view is quite nasty. A natural person exposing this type of behaviour would be locked away, under heavy medication and subject to emergency counselling. While the findings are particularity scary, there is hope. By applying the psychological view we could tap into the experience how asocial psychopathic individuals can be dealt with. It also would help to define what constitutes a valuable member of society.
You then can apply the basics of the Maslov pyramid and define the framework of future corporate development: survival and growth, care for the own kin, contribution to the community, self actualisation and finally spiritual development.
It looks, as of today, most corporations are stuck on the survival level and not even care for there own kin (read: customers, employees, suppliers) not to talk about thinking of the community (read: the public, the environment).
Sigmund Freud once stated "Man is a beast and needs to be tamed". Thus the question arises how to tame the enterprises?
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 14 May 2004 | Comments (1) | categories: Business