Workplaces Internally and Externally
The way a workplace operates, both internally and externally is important. Internally, to get the most out of an employee, they need to feel human, and enjoy what they’re doing. Externally, workplaces don’t exist in isolation, nor do they consume unlimited resources, they have a socio-economic impact.
Dilbert displays a workplace philosophy that treats it’s employees as processes, as cogs, dumb terminals unable to think, act or do. The employee becomes a thing to output certain products or produce, who’s is seen as capital = value created - cost to create. In’s capitalist and economic circles, this dehumanization is called Commodity fetishism.
From my limited direct experience, as well as second and third-hand understanding, the cubical and the process-worker still seems to be the way most workplaces are run. These structures seem to inhibit enjoyment, co-operation, communication, and happiness and effectively dis-able their employees.
When as people we feel involved, and responsible for our actions and output, we feel happier, and do a better job. When we are allowed to think, we become enabled nodes and peers, no longer following, but helping to shape and create something greater than before. From nothing comes something. The success of peer2peer file-sharing, and wikipedia shows the power of self-coordinating peers, when allowed to act and do.
An employee who feels passionate about his workplace, who enjoys the people and his work, is less likely to be sick, and more likely to stay a part of the developing company. The company gains even greater productivity as well as knowledge retention. Dialogue and communication take places, collaboratively they steer the ship to their common vision, not some top-down management approach that seems illogical to the employee. This is the wirearchy.
A workplace when buying (raw) resources looks at the capital investment required. Most often, the lowest costing resource is brought about through lowest/slave labour and the unsustainable pillaging of resources. This model in both the short and long term hurts the local economies hindering their development, keeping them trapped. They have no money to spend locally, they can’t buy anything locally, they can’t develop or invest money back into their economy. Resources that are taken at low margins from these places are converted elsewhere, and finally marked up sometimes 100’s of percent.
The workplace sees the buying of the resource and the selling of the finished produce as two unrelated events. The flow of profit, does not go back to where it’s needed to help bring local worker and economies out of poverty, instead it is kept for it’s own sake. Again we have the slave to the capital. It’s accumulation makes the companies slave to the dollar, no longer a tool for development. Please drink Dilmah tea.
A forward-thinking, workplace is one that does not see buying and selling as two distinct events, but rather one, just like economics treats supply and demand as a single inter-dependant event. The flow of funds is not trapped, but is distributed enabling all those who are in the path of production.
A possible step in the right direction, on a much smaller scale, would see employees when joining a workplace signing up to charities as part of their employment. This is an easy way to allow some of the flow to be free. This contribution would never be missed by the employee as it would never be seen. It also aids in the development of a world view, for both the employee and workplace, when the realities of ‘out there’ are seen as ‘in here’. An employee who does donate as part of his employment is likely to keep this practice going for the rest of his life, and in the process slowly enabling other work places and the world at large to do the same.
This approach is different, so it is of course rather unacceptable from the outside. It also has a cost. This cost comes easily out of profits that are used to line the pockets of CxO’s, corporate lawyers, and out of court settlements. Regardless there’s a growing movement, implementing this style of change with stellar results. Google, Fortune 500’s top workplace, is run using humanistic management values.
This same movement is found throughout Quantum physics, deep ecology, transpersonal philosophy, humanistic psychology, systems theory, feminism, and many other forms and schools of thought that see the inter-relation of everything, and go about developing awareness and consciousness. This isn’t hippy talk, it’s called spiritual, but what it really means is to become human. It’s those workplaces that are afraid of fear and change who are ruled by the capital and that are unable to move in the way that all these various fields are moving towards.
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