Fred Nickols and I are having a dialogue that is very helpful to me about
how we use goal language. Fred writes:
>It is common enough to refer to an organization's action but organizations
>don't do anything; people do.
Once again, Fred (just like last time), there is a way of understanding
what you say that I have to agree with. It is common sense.
However, if you really believe that an organization's are simply the
actions of the people within it, how can you explain the actions of a mob?
Okay, okay, it is the people in the mob who are doing the acting -- that's
true enough. But there are many cases where the action taken by those
people goes against the moral values of EVERY member of the mob!
For example, there have been groups of people (none of whom believe that
it is correct to burn down another's property) who set fire to a building.
If there aren't group "goals" that can be distinguished from individuals'
goals, how could this occur?
And please don't get weird about inferences. My ethics professors taught
me that inferences from behavior are the only way to arrive at the "real"
beliefs or values of anyone, including oneself.
My point is not to argue philosophy. I have spent my career working with
organizational culture change. I came to this field from a background in
individual (behavioral) psychology. I thought it was absurd to talk of
the psychology (or anything else) of a group apart from the
characteristics of its component people. But I discovered that there is
much power in groups, and that it makes sense (even if it is something of
a shorthand way of speaking) to talk about group characteristics. If I
hadn't accepted this, I would have had to deny the power of culture change
to affect individuals' behavior. I would have been doomed to try
one-to-one interventions, which would never have worked to change an
organization. Instead, I work with group-level interventions. I get
people to make things different for the group, then stand back and watch
as individual behavior changes wholesale!
I am simply being a pragmatist when I talk about groups having goals.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>