Download In “When Corporations Rule the World,” David C

METAPHORS OF LIFE AND MANAGEMENT
Introduction
In “When Corporations Rule the World,” David C. Korten
revealed what had become his understanding of the world of
economic development in which he had participated. He stated:
“Our relentless pursuit of economic growth is accelerating
the breakdown of the planet’s life support systems, intensifying
resource competition, widening the gap between rich and poor,
and undervaluing the relationships of family and community. The
growing concentration of power in global corporations and
financial institutions is stripping governments – democratic and
otherwise – of their ability to set economic, social and
environmental priorities in the larger common interest.
Driven by a single-minded dedication to generating even
greater profits for the benefit of their investors, global
corporations and financial institutions have turned their economic
power into political power. They now dominate the decision
processes of governments and are rewriting the rules of world
commerce through international trade and investment agreements
to allow themselves to expand their profits without regard to the
social and environmental consequences borne by the larger society
Continuing business as usual will almost certainly lead to
economic, social, and environmental collapse.”
Korten’s warning is supported by other academics. Jared
Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of
California, Los Angeles. Among Dr. Diamond’s many awards is
the National Medal of Science. Diamond sees a resemblance
between the collapse of earlier civilizations and the threatened
collapse of contemporary human societies. See “Easter Island’s
End” in Discover Magazine (August 1995), and his book
“Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”. Diamond
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speaks of overuse of resources, deforestation, destruction of ecosystems, excessive consumption by the wealthy for the primary
purpose of flaunting their wealth, competition for the scarce
resources leading to war and conflict. Diamond notes that the
advantage modern societies have over their predecessors is
recorded knowledge of the nature and causes of the collapses.
Korten contends that to a considerable extent the current problem
originates with the United States. Its representatives are the
primary marketers of the false promises of consumerism and the
foremost advocates of the market deregulation, free trade, and
privatization policies that are advancing the global consolidation of
corporate power and the corresponding corruption of democratic
institutions.
Resolving the crisis depends on civil societies mobilizing to
reclaim the power that corporations and global financial markets
have usurped. Our best hope for the future lies with locally owned
and managed economies that rely predominantly on local resources
that meet the livelihood needs of their members in ways that
maintain a balance with the earth. Such a shift in intellectual
structures and priorities may open the way to eliminating
deprivation and extreme inequality from the human experience,
instituting true citizen democracy, and releasing presently
unrealized potential for individual and collective growth and
creativity.
(See Korten, “The Post-Corporate World” pp. 6-7).
If we agree with Korten, the instinct of the “management mind”
may cause us to venture immediately into finding practical
solutions for such problems, or challenges as modern
“management speak” instructs us. Such practical solutions are
likely to be as effective as rearranging the deck chairs of the
Titanic as it was about to plummet to the ocean floor. Before
effective practical solutions can be devised for matters of social
policy, we must first examine the ideologies that underpin our
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belief system, including our values and the metaphors that inform
and portray our values and belief system. Moreover, in matters as
complex as global cooperation, we must first understand belief
systems of a vast variety of cultures, including our own. We must
also be prepared to examine critically our own and other belief
systems, and to incorporate aspects of other belief systems into our
own beliefs.
With some minor exceptions, such as the practice of Yoga in the
West, it has not been the tradition of western colonialists, both
military and corporate, to learn from the belief systems of other
peoples. In the Americas, aboriginal beliefs and practices of
honouring nature have been swept aside by the interests of the
dominant western values of ‘development’ for profit and financial
wealth, private property, and the belief of human dominion over
nature. Nevertheless, it is critical that we examine the nature
and consequences of our beliefs. Our belief systems not only
predicate how we view life and the universe but how we act or
fail to act.
New stories and metaphors of life
David Korten calls for an attempt to replace the traditional,
dominant western scientific view of the universe with a new
metaphor. He was inspired by the works of biologist Dr. Mae-Wan
Ho whose interest in how the wisdom embodied in living systems
might help develop life-friendly economic systems. See
http://www.cts.cuni.cz/conf98/ho.htm and
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/.
Ho contends that science is in the process of a basic paradigm shift
from the metaphor of the machine to the metaphor of the living
organism. Korten sees the metaphors as important in assisting us to
move from the society we are to the society we have the potential
to become. He notes that for 300 years Western, and increasingly
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other, societies have been living out the deadly tale inspired by
Newtonian physics. According to that tale:
The universe resembles a giant clockwork set in motion
by a master clock maker at the beginning of creation
and left to run down with time as its spring unwinds. In
short, we live in a dead and wasting universe. Matter is
the only reality, and the whole is no more nor less than
the aggregation of its parts. By advancing our understanding of the parts through the reductionist processes
of science, we gain dominion over the whole and the
power to bend the future to our ends.
Consciousness is an illusion: life is only the outcome of
material complexity.We evolved through a combination
of chance genetic mutations and a competitive struggle
in which those more fit survived and flourished as the
weaker and less worthy perished. Neither consciousness
nor life has meaning or purpose. People are just
extremely complicated machines, whose behaviour is
dictated by knowable natural laws.
Competition for territory and survival is the basic law of
Nature. We cannot expect humans to be or become more
than brutish beasts driven by basic instincts to survive,
reproduce and seek distraction from existential
loneliness through the pursuit of material gratification. A
primary function of the institutions of civilized societies
is to use the institutional control structures of hierarchy
and markets to channel our dark human instincts toward
economically productive ends.
See Korten pp. 9-10
Korten sees this story as having had positive consequences of
liberating people from the stultifying intellectual tyranny of
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religious dogma. Galileo’s scientific, empirical observations about
the universe were unpopular with the religious orthodoxy of his
time, but his observations helped challenge the self-serving
religious beliefs of reality, based on mythology. The move to
scientific thinking and investigation also contributed to great
affluence for around 20% of the world’s population.
Korten contends that the negative aspects of the scientific
revolution are putting humanity of the path of self-destruction.
Money has become the defining value of contemporary societies.
The ethic of Hedonism with its material self-gratification rules in
most societies. With this, there is hierarchy, control-oriented
institutions of governments and corporations and an economic
system that rewards greed and destroys life. We have no reason to
live beyond the accumulation of wealth and having technological
distractions such as computer games, movies, television programs,
drugs etc. Korten suggests that the materialist culture encouraged
by scientific exploration has produced lives without meaning or
purpose. The triumph of science over religion has allowed us to
free ourselves from the intellectual constraints of religion but has
caused us to lose touch with the spirituality of humanity, the earth,
and the universe.
Important in this view is the work of Thomas Berry in Dream
of the Earth. Berry’s concern is that Christianity in the West
has emphasized too much the issue and language of
redemption rather that creation, in particular the role of
human spirit in the process of creation. SEE THE CLASS
WEBSITE FOR AN ARTICLE BY ANDREW ANGYAL ON
BERRY’S WORK.
Is there evidence to support the foregoing contentions? Are
such issues as workplace burnout, murder and suicide
committed by young people, slavery and exploitation of
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humans and other life forms symptoms of the loss of human
spirituality and its creativity?
Inspired by the work of Mae-Wan Ho and Thomas Berry, Korten
offers a different metaphor for the universe, involving human
purpose. (see Korten p. 12).
The universe is a self-organizing system engaged in the
discovery and of realization of its own possibilities
through a continuing process of transcendence to higher
levels of order and self-definition. Modern science has
confirmed the Hindu belief that all matter exists as a
continuing dance of flowing energies. Yet matter is
somehow able to maintain the integrity of its boundaries
and internal structures in the midst of apparent disorder.
Similarly, the cells of a living organism, which are in a
constant state of energy flux, maintain their individual
integrity while functioning coherently as parts of larger
wholes. This ability implies some form of self-knowledge
in both “inert” matter and living organisms at each
level of organization. Intelligence and consciousness may
take many different forms and are in some ways pervasive
even in matter. What we know as life may not be an
accident of creation but rather integral to it, an attractor
that shapes the creative unfolding of the cosmos.
To the extent that these premises are true, they suggest that
we have scarcely begun to imagine, much less experience,
the possibilities of our own capacity for intelligent, selfaware living. Nor have we tested our potential for selfdirected cooperation as a foundation for modern social
organization. Evolution, although it involves competitive
struggles, violence, and death, also involves love,
nurturance, regeneration, and rebirth - and is a
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fundamentally cooperative and intelligent enterprise.
There is substantial evidence that it is entirely natural for
healthy humans to live fully and mindfully in service to the
unfolding capacities of self, community, and the planet. Yet,
in our forgetfulness, we have come to doubt this aspect of
our own being. Nurturing the creative development of our
capacities for mindful living should be a primary function of
the institutions of civilized societies. It is time that we awaken
from our forgetfulness and assume conscious responsibility
for reshaping our institutions to this end.
Unlike the dead or dying universe theory inspired by physics, this
story of life invites us to use our consciousness and abilities to
master the art of living at both the individual and societal levels.
The scientific discoveries of biology have transformed the
metaphor of life from the clockwork universe to biological
development of not only the human body but the human mind.
Some will argue this is not a new story, but an old story,
rediscovering that of ancient cultures. The difference of this story
from those of the ancient cultures is our access to the modern
phenomenon of scientific investigation and the opportunity that
exists to use such knowledge to develop new understanding and
power to integrate individual and societal development.
Capitalism and the metaphor of cancer
In When Corporations Rule the World, Korten speaks of “a market
tyranny” extending across the planet like a cancer, destroying the
environment and livelihoods, displacing people, undermining
democracy, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money.
In The Post-Corporate World, Korten revised the metaphor,
substituting capitalism for “the market”. Cancer occurs when a cell
is damaged and forgets that it is part of a larger body. The cancer
cell seeks to grow without regard to the consequences of such
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growth on the whole body. It ultimately destroys the body that
feeds it.
Korten considers now that cancer is not a metaphor for market
economies within capitalism but a clinical diagnosis of a pathology
to which market economies are prone in the absence of oversight
by citizens and democratic governments. Korten believes that
restoring the health of democracies and markets is the remaining
hope for purging them of the cancerous pathology.
A cure?
Korten offers several proposed practical solutions to cure the
capitalist pathology of cancer. These are as follows:
 End the legal fiction that entitles corporations to the rights of
natural persons and exclude corporations from political
participation;
 Implement serious reform of political campaigns and reduce
the influence of money on politics;
 Eliminate corporate welfare by eliminating direct subsidies;
and recover other externalized costs from corporations
through fees and taxes;
 Implement mechanisms to regulate international corporations
and finance;
 Use fiscal and regulatory policy to make financial speculation
unprofitable; and to give an economic advantage to humanscale, stakeholder-owned enterprises.
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More important than these practical policies is the need for an
enormous paradigm shift in our view of, economics, life and the
environment that sustains life. Such paradigm shifts have occurred
throughout recorded history. The ending of slavery in the West, the
fall of apartheid, new perceptions of the role of women in society,
perceptions of persons with disabilities as valuable members of
society, the value of human diversity in society, democratic
government, the empirical methodology of science, the
dependency of human life on other life forms in our planetary ecosystems, and the humane treatment of children and animals are a
few of the societal changes that occurred because of a paradigm
shift in human thought and action. In the Soviet Union, the
paradigm shift from a highly-centralized economy and government
to a more decentralized form appears to be in the process of
development.
Not all paradigm shifts are positive for the generation and
regeneration of life. With the creation of freedom of the individual
in the 18th Century Enlightenment emerged a paradigm shift to
greed as a major motivator of human action. Since the Industrial
Revolution, new technology aimed at faster, more efficient
production has changed the paradigm of work, from a meaningful,
creative pursuit that marked the individual’s identity and his or her
place in society. The new paradigm for many workers is that he or
she is a commodity to be bought and sold with a value determined
by the profit to be made on the commodities or services produced
by the work. The intrinsic value of work that provides a sense of
accomplishment, meaning, and individual identity has been
replaced by a focus on extrinsic matters – the contribution of work
to the accumulation of money, by both worker and employer.
Social values of skilled, meaningful work and social interaction in
the workplace have largely been replaced by repetitive work with
little skill and workplaces stripped of human contact. Such soulless
places are not confined to work. In schools, colleges, and
universities, the lack of meaning and a sense of one’s place in that
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corner of society is frequently absent in students’ experience,
sometimes with serious consequences.
Expanding on Roman Catholic doctrine in Pope Leo XIII’s
Encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope John-Paul II presented to the
world in 1981 the Encyclical Laborem Exercens, a critique of both
capitalism and Marxism, particularly of their impact on the
destruction of work as a creative exercise necessary for human
fulfillment. In spite of such contributions to the literature, the
dominant ideology of capitalism is that work is important as a
creator of wealth, not for the development of the human mind and
spirit.
See also Heather Menzies “Whose Brave New World?” for
paradigm shifts in contemporary workplaces.
Competing Ideologies
(A) Trickle-down theory
Korten’s foregoing objection to the corporation as a social
institution, in its current form, is based on a different ideology
from that which underpins modern capitalism. A key element of
that capitalist ideology is “trickle-down theory.” This advocates
letting businesses flourish, since their profits are assumed to
ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals and the rest of
the economy. This is related to “supply side economics,” a theory
which holds that reducing tax rates, especially for businesses and
wealthy individuals, stimulates savings and investment for the
benefit of everyone.
Korten, and others, challenge the assumption that the accumulation
of large amounts of capital by corporations automatically serves
the interests of society as a whole. While capitalism does generate
income, there is ample evidence that, within countries such as
Canada and the USA, “wealth” has become increasingly
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concentrated in fewer hands. Furthermore, the proportion of
Canadians and Americans living below the poverty line (that is
with income less than is necessary to pay for basic requirements of
food, shelter and clothes) is increasing, not decreasing, with the
onset of capitalism, in spite of increasing Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) in those countries. Inequality of income between rich and
poor is even greater when we consider levels of poverty in socalled developing countries, particularly but not exclusively
Africa. See class web site (MGT3850B) for information on the
salaries and benefits of corporate CEOs. See also Globe & Mail
article of March 21, 2008.
The shortcomings of “trickle-down theory” are even more evident
when we consider the disparity of wealth between “developed” and
“developing” countries. So-called “third-world debt” is a constant
reminder that trickle-down theory has not brought greater equality
of wealth across the globe and within countries.
(B) Social Darwinism
A familiar response of proponents of unfettered capitalism to the
grossly unequal distribution of “wealth” that it creates is that the
“have-nots” are poor because they are simply not sufficiently
competitive. Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” is read by “social
Darwinists” to suggest that life is a competition for survival of the
fittest and that the poor lose the competitive struggle because they
are less “fit for survival” than the winners, the rich. It must be
remembered that economists use the Darwinian example as a
metaphor for societal competition. If one were to view Darwinism
literally in the societal context, one might conclude that the poor
are fitter for survival than the rich because the number of poor
appears to be increasing while the number of extremely wealthy
people appears to be falling.
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As an ideology for rationalizing and justifying extremes of wealth
and poverty, Social Darwinism has broad appeal in North America.
The result is that government policies tend to operate to promote
wealth accumulation regardless of its unequal distribution, and
regardless of other social values that are sacrificed in the pursuit of
maximizing “wealth”.
(C) Keynesian Economics
Such alternative social values form the basis of Keynesian
economics, which differs from the laissez-faire approach of trickledown theory and supply side economics. Named after economist
John Maynard Keynes, this is an economic theory that advocates
government intervention, or “demand-side” management of the
economy, to achieve full employment and stable prices. A further
manifestation of Keynesian economics is programs to foster
greater economic and social equality within society. Such
programs include publicly funded healthcare, education, retirement
pensions, unemployment insurance, literacy programs for
immigrants, etc.
Government intervention formed the basis of Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s pre-WWII “New Deal” which sought to rescue
capitalism from the Great Recession. Notably, Keynesian theory
contemplated economic and social values other than maximum
accumulation of “wealth”. The security of employment and
freedom from the instability of inflation and deflation are
identified in Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Economic
history has demonstrated that, if rapid economic growth is the only
or primary societal economic goal, sacrifices will have to be made
in other areas, such as price stability, levels of unemployment, and
distribution of income.
The checks of capitalism by governments in pre-WWII USA and
post-war Canada and Western Europe were based on Keynesian
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theory that sought to create an acceptable balance of growth, full
employment, stability, and distribution of wealth. The underlying
ideology of Keynesian economics places more emphasis on
societal cooperation rather than competition.
Ideology as rationalization
While trickle-down theorists predict that the accumulation of
wealth by the few will ultimately benefit everyone in society,
empirical evidence suggests that poverty remains an issue in socalled developing nations and within Canada. To explain this,
trickle-down economists suggest that, while poverty remains, the
poor are still better off than they would be if they were not touched
by global capitalism. The argument is that the exploited garment
factory worker in Indonesia is still better off than she would be
living in squalor off the land. While this may be true, it does not
dispose of the issue. The appropriate comparison of relative
“wealth” is not between the exploitation in the factory and bare
survival and death in the country occupied by the corporations. It is
well documented that colonial capitalism has destroyed much of
the environment of indigenous peoples that, prior to colonization,
had supported simpler, sustainable, meaningful life among such
peoples. The ecological damage from colonial over-farming,
mining, extermination of wildlife, deforestation, soil erosion,
pollution or excessive use or diversion of water, and exposure to
carcinogenic chemicals explains much of the consignment of
indigenous peoples to a life of capitalist exploitation caused in
large measure by environmental and social degradation caused by
colonial capitalism.
Furthermore, the assumption that the only choice available to
people of developing countries is sweat shop exploitation or death
by disease and starvation is fallacious. Small-scale, low-leveltechnology operations in developing countries have worked well
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and have the advantage that profits are ploughed back into the
local community. However, it is difficult to find media coverage of
those small-scale successes.
While “ideology” often refers to a system of belief as to the nature
of reality, it is not infrequently used as rationalization not of reality
but of a social or economic system imposed on society by those
who stand to benefit most from the system. Accordingly, because
the system of corporate capitalism tends to create both great wealth
and poverty, it is expedient to blame the existence of poverty not
on the system of capitalism but on the poor themselves.
Democracy
The idea of democracy resonates in Canada and the Western
world. Our various wars across the globe seem to be rationalized
not only as necessary for self-preservation from terrorists but as
essential to take democracy to undemocratic countries.
It is useful to reflect upon the inherent values, beliefs, structures
and purposes of democracy as we perceive it. Possible inclusions
are distribution rather than concentration of power, election of
leaders and decision-makers by all adult members of society,
political and legal accountability of leaders to the electorate,
openness of government actions, freedom of speech, association,
religion, conscience etc., freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention
or punishment, freedom from discrimination on irrelevant grounds,
respect for one’s privacy…..and so on.
Glasbeek (Chapter 6) contends that the law structures our
corporations to enable them to avert the dangers and perils of
democratic rule. Democratic rule may bring less value to society
than the wealth accumulation of corporations. Nevertheless,
democracy is a value held in sufficient regard to warrant inquiry
into Glasbeek’s concerns.
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Glasbeek concedes the wealth creation advantage of large
corporations and its benefit to society. It is Glasbeek’s contention
that publicly traded corporations:
(i)
are legally structured as feudal institutions;
(ii)
commit crimes over and over again; and
(iii)
wield massive, disproportionate, and therefore
unacceptable political power in our supposed
democratic polity.
Undemocratic nature of corporate governance
Problem of the separation of ownership from control.
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