WHY SO NEGATIVE ON CORPORATE SOCIETY?

WHY SO NEGATIVE ON CORPORATE SOCIETY?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 14, 2010

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A READER WRITES:

Why are you so negative on corporate society? It would appear it has been pretty good to you. Care to reply?

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Since I don’t have your name or can’t trace your email address, I must assume that you don’t want me to know who you are. Fine. I will grant you this. It is a question I’ve been asked more than once. In fact, some readers believe I am negative for negative sake with so much to be positive about.

I will be positive when working stiffs don’t live under a cloud of uncertainty caused in no small way with the avarice of corporate society.

It is true I’ve spent my career in corporate society, but never joined the club.

Corporate society treated me well because I was a grind, and out performed the princes. I had no interest in pyramid climbing, small talk, impeccable table manners, knowing and drinking fine wines, having country club connections, or promoting association with people with deep pockets.

I lived to work. I found comfort and connection with doers, which were the people I served. During my days as a chemical sales engineer, I had the greatest customer loyalty and the lowest account turnover of my entire company. This became the springboard to my international status. I was not a social butterfly and could not name drop with colleagues of my rank, and had an inclination to spurn such invitations.

Given this disposition, which was considered a character flaw, I think you could say the negative to which you refer is well advised.

This disposition seemed to take hold when working in such places as the Americas, especially when put up in some luxurious hotel and looking out a window from the thirtieth floor and seeing the squalor of a ghetto below, or going into the bushveld to call on a corporate client refining some precious metal from the earth, knowing the indigenous people were sharing little in the profits of the enterprise, and then becoming the executive face of my company in a place called “South Africa,” where four million whites were living in colonial splendor on the backs of fourteen million Bantu and Coloreds in a policy called “apartheid” (separate development of the races). Corporate apartheid actually meant the need to have a passbook up to date, and to be where expected to be, or go to jail.

You become jaded from such experience especially when, although white, you can identify with the exploited having been the son of such a lot.

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Austrian born Peter Drucker is said to have invented corporate society. Whether true or not, it has the stamp of a nineteenth century Prussian mentality with its rigorous structure, policies and procedures, management by objectives, and performance appraisal as an index to its corporate character and competency.

What always amused me is that corporate society succeeded despite its closeted compartmentalization. It did so mainly because it never paid for its sins of commission or omission. Its engine was the rank and file of powerless people who kept it afloat then as now.

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At several junctures of my career, both as an operative and consultant, I participated in redundancy exercises with such innocuous designations as “assessment center,” “departmental reengineering,” “redeployment networking,” and “outplacement bureau.” Translated, they meant, collectively, the getting rid of people, and the people gotten rid of were the people with the least amount of power and influence, not the incompetent or apathetic.

It would seem that twenty-first century corpocracy has not been able to shed this rigor mortis.

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New York Times columnist David Brooks, in his column today (July 14, 2010, St. Petersburg Times), touches on this subject in his usual deliberate and reasonable fashion without sounding negative.

He differentiates prince charmers from grinds, pointing that prince charmers have the finesse, aplomb, smarts and savoir-vivre to make them good company in Beijing, Moscow and the White House, while grinds are ill-at-ease, socially inert, and would prefer to be working than lollygagging.

Brooks writes:

“Since the princes are nicer and more impressive, it is easy to be seduced into the belief that they also are more trustworthy. This is false. During the past few years, the princes at Citigroup, Bears Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers behaved with incredible stupidity while hedge fund loners (grinds) behaved with impressive restraint.”

Brooks goes on to say the moneychangers knew they were too big to fail, and expected and got bailouts, whereas the grinds had no parachute, no safety net, they had no choice but to be prudent. Brooks continues:

“Sadly, this recovery has been great for princes and horrible for grinds … (the princes) are doing very well. The big companies are posting excellent earnings. They are sitting on mountains of cash.

“The aspiring grinds, meanwhile, are dead in the water. Small businesses are not growing. They are not hiring. They are struggling to stay alive.”

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The great lie that has been perpetuated for a century now is that America survives with giant corporations when America survives with grinds in small businesses eking out a living with ten or twelve loyal employees working like the grinds that they are. When the fat cats fail to loan money to these businesses, and as Brooks points out this is clearly the case, you need look no further for the failure of the bailout to work.

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