Companies differentiate from other organizational forms like that of a Nation in the sense that either follow a different set of values. One of those values that is part in one (the nation) but not in most others (companies) is the value of freedom.
Once you have entered the premises of a company you have signed to be a "slave;" you are bound by company policies and rules, you are chained to an organizational structure, locked-up in a hierarchy and limited by the economic success of the company itself... Ok, things are not that bad, but working for an organization means that you have to deal with all kinds of constructions.
The requirement to manage (and to control) a large corporation is directly linked with the limitation of freedom. If a day-trader in an investment company is fried from any regulations this trader could harm the organization, as we have seen more than once.
There are different organizational structures where this paradigm is turned up! side-down. One of these are the peer-to-peer networks where control of external regulators is nearly made impossible, others more healthy movements are those of the open architecture concepts.
The Open Source ideology for example is one of them: "Linux is subversive." ... Linus Torvalds's style of development-release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity-came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here-rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
(www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar)
"In" the bazaar (open source community) you are more free than "in" the cathedral (corporation / company). Of course there is no absolute freedom, because in the community there are all eyes pointed on you ("how many eyeballs can tame complexity") but the idea of open source is that the end product (linux) is free and there is a limited control in organizing the product. There is also no top-down design and the work (program) is "egoless."
A formal and corporate organization is closed as much as possible. Let's give some examples:
= there is a central phone number to communicate. If every employee would have it's own outside line and number it wouldn't be possible to track the traffic, it would be possible to administer.
= Internet on the desktop is more and more limited, for example to call-center employees. Freedom to surf the internet costs the corporation more money than it delivers on creativity and new solutions
= There is a formal hierarchy. If some employee turns out to be smart its freedom to act is limited by the goodwill of his boss.
= The 70/20/10-rule (attributed to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt) shows too that employees are only free up to 10% to participate in activities that are not-core-business related. Employees are bound to focus on the core business.
= etc, etc.
There is a freedom of speech. But this freedom must be functional. If you want to change things in the organization and you are not backed-up by a large base there is a small chance that your initiative is accepted and implemented.
Freedom has little value in a corporate organization.
© 2008 Hans Bool
Hans Bool writes articles about management, culture and change. If you are interested to read or experience more about these topics have a look at: Astor White.
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