Simon Buckingham wrote
>That structure prohibits interaction- and learning, hence my advocacy of
>downstructuring removing structure. Structure is evil- it causes all of the
>problems of social exclusion we see in society and all of the problems within
>organizations such as politics and so on because it prevents or
>significantly hinders the ability for an individual to learn, collaborate,
>interact and share.
It looks to me, that there is a misunderstanding between the tools
and usage of the tools here. If somebody uses the chain saw to cut
somebody's head, it is not the fault of the chain saw, but of whoever
misused the chain saw.
Yes organizations can be evil, they can cause all the problems of
social exclusion and all the misery connected with it. But organizations
are constructs for social interaction, they are the tool. Humans, at least
from the time of recorded history, used structures to survive and make
life more bearable. The villages, cities, markets etc., all are examples
of organizations, that make life worth living. The humans are political
animals, as the Aristotle's was preaching about 2300 years ago.
What is wrong with structures, that make life so miserable? The
size. The destruction of the market. The size is the culprit, the size is
the criminal in organizations. The size creates the positional power of
uncontrolled small criminals, that make life miserable for millions of
individuals. There is only one way to control the size, superimposing
market forces where applicable or democratic control of the structures.
When talking about Mafia, people think about it as an organization of
organized crime. Organizations outside market forces or organizations
without democratic control become criminal in nature. When a corporation
controls, to say 85% of the market of something, that corporation takes
the attributes of the organized crime. Such structures are outside the
market forces, they issue private taxes to the population at large, they
have their private armies in the form of lawyers, security guards, public
relation people etc. These are highly trained mercenaries, that are
capable of harming the public at large for many years to come. Many of
those corporations today have the form of feudal structures. They don't
recognize (they don't want to) any authority other than themselves. They
have the power to impoverish whole cities, districts even smaller
countries by removing the enterprise from the locality in question, if the
locality doesn't treat them as proper slave masters. These structures
suck the wealth and life from the majority of citizenry. The man hour of
work today can produce more than a man hour in around 716 AD. At that
time the Roman Emperor Anastasius as a precaution before a threat of siege
of Constantinople by Saracens issued a decree, that persons who are not
able to provide with means of subsistence for three years to evacuate the
city (as described by E. Gibbon in 'The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire'). My space is the city of Toronto. The city and its
inhabitants are well educated and I would say quite well to do. However
if a situation will arise for the inhabitants of the city to provide for
themselves for three years, the city will be almost empty. My point is,
that even with such enormous advances in technology, the majority of the
population cannot afford provisions for even a month. The wealth created
is hijacked from the population to satisfy the vanity of view individuals.
When the wealth is controlled by view individuals, the structures for
humane interaction are controlled by the same individuals. The structures
cease to be a tool for human interaction. The structure becomes a tool of
robbery. In such structures we cannot talk about learning organizations,
although the majority of this discussion group will disagree with me. The
learning in such organizations is geared to transform people from
individuals to humane resources, to be on the same footing as barrels of
oil or tons of coal. People don't learn to be better individuals or to
satisfy their curiosity, or to better themselves their family and
community, but to produce more per unit of labor for the same price to the
company. The former so called communist countries were trying very hard
to do the same thing, to transform their big enterprises into learning
organization. They were pushing courses of all kinds, lectures, meetings
to exchange experiences etc. But as the saying goes, you can fool lots of
people most of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the
time. People went to such gatherings, but they mentally signed off. The
lecturers reached the wall. They could do nothing. I have the feeling from
some postings, that this is already starting to happen here. Some people
are trying already to reach to the imaginary whip. If some of the staff
will not go along, well, to use the jargon of the military, such people
should be wasted, or let the bastards starve. What I am trying to say is,
that in big corporations, where the individual was robed of his identity
and became the equivalent of a barrel of oil, we cannot speak of learning
organizations. In such organizations we only can speak of manipulation of
humans to squeeze the maximum of his effort for minimum of expense.
Demetre Tziougras
E-mail: flucacad@interlog.com
The Friendly Local University Company
a Life Long Learning Organization for everybody
http://www.interlog.com/~flucaca
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Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>