A blog devoted to the book Zen & Creative Management by Albert Low. By blogging about this author’s work, my hope is to generate creative ideas about bringing spirit into the workplace.
Page 22 ~ That a company is a holon is reflected in what the employees, shareholders, and customers seek from their interrelationship. What they seek is also ambivalent. The employee wants challenge; but he also wants to be unique and seeks recognition to prove his uniqueness. The shareholder wants security of and growth in his …
On the contrary, “so far from being controlled by the market, the firm to the best of its ability has made the market subordinate to the goals of its planning.” Galbraith is equally categorical when he says that profit maximization is no longer necessary. The second difference in management theory is exemplified in the writings …
Ernest Dale says that presidents, faced with the need to balance alternatives who act in a way to optimize the return for the different forces making up the field, find that they are unable to act at all. He is right in saying this since he is talking about the president-as-person, not the president-as-role. Dale …
A manager is an employee. However, strictly speaking, the president is not an employee: it is he who employs. The role of the president is to put to use the commitment of employees, shareholders, and customers. To understand fully the implications of what is being said, a distinction must be drawn between the role of …
A shareholder can control certain aspects of the financial dealings within a company, but the extent of the control is limited, as is the responsibility or liability he has for failure on the part of the company. Although the meaning of ownership has changed in that it has become a much more complex notion than …
The decline of power, moreover, is not confined simply to the shareholder but, according to Business Week, has extended to the board of directors. Even the board, which once sat at the right hand of the source of all economic power, must change its role. Its control is now becoming control in theory rather than …
Page 16 ~ The standard view of a company could be called a “univalent” one: a linear descent from the board of directors through the managers and employees to the customer. This univalent view has as its corollary the belief that a company is “simply in business to make a profit.” This belief is one …
We have said that the opposition and collaboration between the forces is not on a conscious level and so far we have pictured two sets of “blind” forces at work. They are forces operating in the dark and are really forces in potential. A third force is necessary to make this potential a reality. This …
Figure 2 shows a set of interacting forces. Some tend toward the center. These are the integrative forces;the forces of survival. They are the manifestation of the unity of will. Those that tend toward the periphery manifest the expression of Will. Everything is pressing out to being itself to the full. This “pressing out,” this …
The outward tendency has its basis in the need for each to improve its financial position in opposition to the others. This is not a conscious opposition, but as each seeks to maximize its financial benefits and because at any one time there is only so much finance, each necessarily opposes the others. The centering …