Why do we create organisations? LO15953

Simon Buckingham (go57@dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 23 Nov 1997 09:42:43 -0800

Replying to LO15941 --

Debbie Roth wrote:

> Two heads can be better than one, or 1+1.

"can be" is right and not necessarily so! The outcome from a collaboration
depends on who the two people (or more) collaborating are. For every
collaborative transaction, transaction costs are incurred. These are the
negotiation costs, costs of getting together in the first place, time and
energy spent collaboarting and so on.

The transaction costs are only worth incurring, and 1+1= greater than 2,
only if the benefits from that collaboration eg. new insights, learning,
output, ideas outweigh the costs. It has to be a two-way street too for
the colloraboration to be sustainable and repeatable- all collaborators
have to gain something from it and that gain has to be at least worth
their costs. I'm sure that if we stopped learning from being on this list,
then we would unsubscribe- the costs would in that case outweigh
non-existent benefits.

Its all about maximizing transactions (business) and minimizing busyness
(transaction costs)!

regards simon buckingham
http://www.unorg.com/trans

-- 

Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>

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