Group Identity

This hierarchy of identities may help to direct organizational progress as well. We can compare private organizations (family), civic organizations, and professional organizations (companies). With families, it is obvious that one purpose is to "raise" the children, and it is not such a stretch to include "raising" the adults as well. With the obvious age/experience difference, the adults will have a greater accountability but not necessarily any greater ability. Nonprofit and voluntary organizations usually exist for an explicit purpose. Their group dynamics will be similar to the group dynamics that play out in for-profit organizations.

There are at least two major types of for-profit organizations. The first is private organizations that are not under the pressures inherent in the stock market. Private organizations are able to find a business niche, produce a product or service, and survive by maintaining an acceptable net profit. Public for-profit organizations are under the pressures of the interest of absentee investors. (My bias is notably, admittedly against this interest. This is where I find profit and growth acceptable but economic exploitation unacceptable.) Generally, the push from absentee investors is towards increasing profit rather than sustainable growth and profit, so this type of organization tends to grow to unsustainable size through unsustainable means. (Recently, "too big to fail".)

In order to sell, a company provides some product or service. This is analogous to the creative self. As a business, this production does not need to be playful or involve any depth of curiosity if the product or service is simple enough and if demand and competition are somewhat consistent. As competition increases, or if demand is erratic, then a greater degree of creativity and flexibility becomes important. So production of a saleable product or service is necessary in for-profit organizations.

At the level of Purpose, or able self, we encounter the bottom line. The bottom line involves staying in business. Because societies progress, industries progress, and most products also must progress. Even with products that don't change much over time--such as bread--we'll see changes in production, distribution, and sales. With products that involve technology, we'll see more noticeable, more significant change even in the products themselves. At base, then, companies must keep up with the changes in their industries even if their (energy) industries are behind social expectations. With something as competitive as software, if you're not producing those changes, the industry may pass you by altogether. So with different industries, there are different pressures, obviously. Staying in business, continuing to produce, is the bottom line even if the products one produces change. There's a strong product focus here.

At the level of Understanding, we begin to deal in management and business planning. This is the "good and right" self. As far as for-profit businesses are concerned, a good business is a successful business. At this point, then, we're focusing on effective planning and efficient management. With a hierarchical structure, the managers are not necessarily producers of product. To the extent that managers are not hands-on producers, they face multiple and competing goal sets. Bureaucracy becomes very important as managers focus less on the quality of the product and sustainability of the company and more on maintaining their own jobs. The "good" manager will be able to handle these three goal sets. At this level of abstraction, besides bureaucracy gaining ground, there is also the possibility of conceptual products: teaching, consulting, therapy, research, etc. So intellectual rights also come in.

Now, as we include increasing levels of complexity, integration becomes increasingly important. If you are an individual farmer looking to get agricultural products to a local market, your business plan may be fairly simple even if your business takes a great deal of personal investment. As multiple classes of workers come into the picture, the competition between class interests (the interests of different positions) complicate the overall process to the extent that these interests cannot be (or simply are not) integrated. Historically, managers have enjoyed a greater organizational status than front-line or ground-level workers. Recently, as the preponderance of available products also moves up this scale, managers have found their status challenged as well. This is not a new process even if it is a new class being challenged. Just as mechanization devalued physical labor, the ready availability of information challenges the expert status of "knowledge workers" and managers while devaluing every type of intellectual property except cutting-edge material. Even the valuable/saleable lifespan of cutting-edge material is shrinking.

The market also changes. Consumer expectations change. This is true for governments and their citizens as well. As the availability of knowledge becomes expected, consumers become more educated. As consumers become more educated--which occurs while production methods and products become increasingly differentiated--they have the option of becoming choosier. And in order to make what they consider to be good choices, they expect a greater degree of transparency. These expectations influence business to not only be "good" at production but also "right" (in the consumer's eyes at least) about how and what they produce. While there is no absolute transparency, information, or coordination between producer and consumer, it is generally in the interest of producers to coordinate with their consumers. All of this so far is taken for granted for the most part.

But this space between Understanding and Appreciation is full of promise...and tension. At the level of Appreciation, you have educated amateurs who can compete with businesses in endeavors that allow open-source production (Linux v. Microsoft, for example). This threatens the market share and sometimes even the existence of certain businesses. As this occurs, coordinating a group of dispersed, interested individuals (coordination) challenges the institutionalized management process (design) itself. As it turns out, coordination of educated individuals is much more effective at producing innovation because of the nature of innovation. This is interesting. Management always had to be somewhat responsive to the physical situation, ground-level workers, competition, and consumer expectations. But this expands competition to include groups that are not under the pressure to create financial profit. In the past, management could improve by focusing on efficiency; but now, management is competing against a production process where efficiency is not a significant concern. And, by taking out efficiency as a significant concern, open-sourcing can be much more effective at creating innovation. To the extent that it ends up making goods available to the public for free, its effects end up being very efficient if the public utilizes the products on a widespread basis.

Part of what this does is to emphasize the important of reputation. When someone needs a finite product within a certain timeframe and certain parameters, it's still best to hire a reputable business. But as societies meet the basic needs of their populations, those populations increasingly turn their attention to progress, to innovation and appreciation--same as happened with mechanization of agricultural production. Surplus attention moves upwards and out. Increasingly--and this is noticeable at the most creative, most competitive firms--people look for the expression of their creative, playful, and true selves where they work.

As firms look for sustainability in this changing environment, it can seem that demands come from all over. It can help to organize goals by degree of necessity in order to determine what is possible. The most basic set of necessities are the physical necessities that it takes to create and market a product. This forms one set of pressures. Integrating expectations of worker classes, reducing conflict between classes (alignment), creates another. Improving production and distribution methods towards consumer-driven expectations of ethical production is another (one which has increased and will likely continue to increase for some time). Developing and maintaining industry advantages are another. Competing with open-sourcing is one that fits hand-in-glove with maintaining and developing talent. Truly talented individuals with cutting-edge training have high expectations. Here, it can be helpful to differentiate between playful enjoyment and creativity as separate from the sense of a meaningful life. While talented individuals will want (demand) both to some extent, providing one or the other may be easier. Trying to provide both may be possible, but even so it helps to distinguish the two. In fact, it may be possible to set up the context of the work situation to also encourage flow experiences at work (pleasure, flow, and meaning being different but complimentary).

A great part of integrating company mission, worker class interests, consumer expectations, and pleasure-flow-meaning will involve being able to communicate to these different levels of goals and interests. Depending on the message one wants to convey, it will be helpful to set up communications customs and expectations to fit with these different levels. A further dialogue on customs and expectations within communications may be called for. Further exploration on where open-sourcing is more effective than institutionalized design will also be interesting.