Dave, I appreciate your responses regarding "the way people are" and
the request for references. I also appreciate your personal
statements of values and view of human beings and organisations based
in your own life experiences and thinking. (I appreciate them. I
don't agree with them all.)
What is displayed by your response and John's original statements,
besides belief masquerading as fact [1], is an "either/or" approach to
individuals and their institutions - whether corporations or other
social institutions. In particular, the descriptors you use when
referring to individuals who are or might be influenced by the
organisations they find themselves in.
"Mutate beliefs" and "give in" are opposed to "being true to
oneself". In both of your statements, I'm left with the impression
that one's values are independent of the social situation and can and
should remain that way for an individual to have integrity.
Yet you quote the source of your value formation, if not the values
themselves, as being your parents. But our parents are only the
first of the social institutions that we find ourselves in that do
indeed shape our values. It seems to me that social institutions are
"supposed to" shape values. They are the phenomena which provide a
mechanism for convergence of all of the varying values that will be
present in any social, cooperative venture over time.
Individual is a phenomenon that arises from a social environment and
then, in complex *adaptive* systems fashion, influences that from
which it arose. But the "from which it arose" remains as a
signficant influencer.
What then is the place of self, values and individuality? In social
terms, it's that the institutions (corporations, etc) continually
evolve, change, learn, grow and realise the possibility of what can
emerge from the interplay of the rich variety of individual
expression. In individual or personal terms, it may be something
like Dave's posting suggests - to provide a constant challenge to
one's own values, beliefs, understandings and idiosyncratic ideas.
It may also be to provide an environment, suggested by Heiddeger,
which demands courage - the existential choice of your own life in
the face of pressure and no-pressure. That is, we continually
confront this existential choice in the face of pressures to choose
one or another and we also face it when we realise that "not
choosing" is equally an option and equally a choice that we make.
None of this would confront us if there were not social institutions
which provided the environment of choice related to being.
What is important in all of this for organisational learning, in my
opinion, is to clearly distinguish "organisation" as a phenomenon in
its own right and to see individuals and organisations as
constituitive of each other. Neither arises independently nor exists
independently and each continues to influence the other in an ongoing
emergence.
[1] I think this illuminates some of my disagreement with Dave's
particular formulation regarding individual and organisation. I
would add that "Without writing them down there is no commitment to
them" and "No one has to be accountable to themselves to stand up for
what they believe" are personal expressions that will not stand up to
the statistical/evidence test you ask of John nor to sociological nor
philosophical analysis. I suggest that public speaking of values as
values is quite adequate in at least certain social contexts (if not
all) for both commitment and accountability to occur as stongly as
you can imagine. I think that the culture has more to do with the
effectiveness of accountability and commitment that personal
qualities. Many of the "interpretive philosophies" suggest that it
is the social interaction - the dialogue - which is the crucial
factor and not the individual and personal acts of writing and
reviewing.
>From an organisational point of view, it may be that the possibility
of the challenging and questioning implied in your committed review
process can be best conducted where there are many different
perspectives. This is what also makes learning effective and rapid.
The corporation provides an intelligence beyond the individuals
which contributes back to the individual as well as being larger than
the individuals within it.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk