Thank you to John Crutcher and John Dentico for addressing some of my
questions on the normative justifications for finding "family values" in
the organization. I think it is time to change the subject header of this
post, but I am maintaining it for consistency.
I am certainly in favor of establishing family-like, empowering
atmospheres at work. I do not believe business and individual personality
are inherently and necessarily at odds, but I was remarking that previous
posts had made it clear that such conflicts do exist and can indeed cause
unanticipated problems when attempting to execute learning organization
strategies.
My fundamental unease is that I do not view organizations as permanent
structures and they are certainly no longer places of permanent
employment. This is why I claimed that we should look to families first as
the providers of healthy, pro-social behaviors and values. Families of
course are not permanent to a far enough extent, but they strike me as
more reliable, and certainly have more potential for reliability, than
commercial organizations. Commercial organizations are very vulnerable to
market forces which can cause lay-offs and even complete shutdowns. What
happens to the person who could only find "home" at work when work lays
him/her off? Is there truly a humane way to ever do this?
Yet a more interesting question is if someone relies upon work for "family
values," or even first encounters them at work, will he/she become too
dependent on this organization to the extent that he/she becomes blinded
to better economic/social opportunities elsewhere? Can this type of
relationship dull one's willingness to be critical enough of the work
environment to continue fostering learning (that is, if I find fault with
this community, where else can I turn?)? Perhaps these are even
non-issues?
Again, I believe in an ideal world, BOTH families and our places of work
should and must provide positive, empowering values. But priority should
be given to the family; it is the family which is the enabling structure
for most of our other forms of organization, even for the corporate world
(or perhaps some sociologist-types can correct me on that assumption...?).
---Duru Ahanotu
iqduru@leland.stanford.edu
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~iqduru
--Duru <iqduru@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>