Organizational Man: Refined or Repressed?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal is the courageous, ancient Greco-Roman nobility, including the unashamed conquerors replete with self-confident will to power rather than shame at having vanquished formidable resistance. Rather than actually advocating that we return to the raping and pillaging that took place back then, Nietzsche wanted to depict modern, emaciated man as a contrast in order to turn the weakening of man around in Europe. Similar to Sinclair Lewis, who wrote his satirical novel, Babbit (1922) to showcase the utter vacuity of the middle-class businessman in America, Nietzsche laments “the reduction of the beast of prey ‘man’ to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal . . .”[1] By that he meant us: modern, enervated, and cultured incarnations of human nature relative to the full, untamed, and resilient lives of the ancient Greco-Roman conquerors. Having no knowledge of the lives that they lived in terms of full, unashamed and unconstrained will to power as will to living life with gusto, we scarcely realize the extent to which our societal institutions and vocational organizations box up our nature to that which is inoffensive and even polite even to competitors.

The full essay is at "Organizational Man."

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 478.

Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

The full essay is at "Managerial Capitalism."

Centuries of Excluding Insiders at Yale

Jonathan Edwards fell out of favor with Yale’s president Clapp, who opposed George Whitefield’s Christian revivals as being too “enthusiastic.” So, Clapp had two pamphlets published to criticize Edwards, who had studied and then taught at Yale. In fact, one of Yale College’s residential colleges has been named after Edwards at least since the late twentieth century. I would imagine that few if any current or former JE students have been informed that Edwards ceased attending Yale Commencement exercises and even visiting campus once he had known of Clapp’s vitriolic pamphlets. It is ironic that in Edwards’s time, Yale’s faculty minimized the impact of original sin in what became known as the New Haven theology. It seems that compassion for people who hold a different theological (or political) view, as in “Love thy enemy,” was nonetheless above the grasp of Yale’s administration. Fast-forward from the first half of the eighteenth century to roughly three hundred years later and incredibly the same hostile, highly dysfunctional organizational culture was still well ensconced at Yale.

The full essay is at "Centuries of Excluding Insiders at Yale."

The Omen

Released in 1976, The Omen reflects the pessimism in America in the wake of the OPEC gas shortage and President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, both of which having occurred within easy memory of the two notable assassinations in 1968. Additionally, the drug culture had come out in the open in the anti-Vietnam War hippie sub-culture, and the sexual revolution, which arguably set the stage for the spread of AIDS beginning in the next decade, was well underway, both of which undoubtedly gave evangelical, socially-conservative Christians the sense that it would not be long until everything literally goes to hell. The film provides prophesy-fulfillment of a birth-narrative (i.e., myth) and a supernatural personality known biblically as the anti-Christ, who as an adult will set man against man until our species is zerstört. It is as if matter (the Christ) and anti-matter (the anti-Christ) finally cancel each other out at the end of time. Economically during the 1970s, inflation and unemployment were giving at least some consumers and laborers the sense of being in a jet trapped in a vertical, free-fall dive of stagflation that not even fiscal and/or monetary policy could divert. The pessimistic mood was captured in another way in another film, Earthquake (1974), in which a natural disaster plays off the mood of utter futility throughout the decade. It is no wonder that Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” resonated so much as a presidential-campaign slogan in 1979 as Jimmy Carter was mired in micro-management inside the White House.  The optimism of a resurgence in political energy overcame the decade’s sense of pessimism. That Damien, the anti-Christ in The Omen, survives the attempt on his life by Robert Thorn, his adoptive father resonates with that pessimism. Satan’s plan is still “game on” as the film ends, and this ending fits the mood in America during the decade. With this historical context contemporaneous with the film laid out, a very practical, manifestation of evil subtly depicted in the film and yet easily recognized by customers frustrated with corrupt and inept management of incompetent employees will be described in the context of pessimism from utter frustration. Such frustration survived the squalid decade of the 1970s at least decades into the next century.

The full essay is at "The Omen."

 

Deflating Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail: Barnes and Noble at Yale

Atrocious human-resources management, even regarding in-store employees of a sub-contractor, can easily be understood to detract from repeat customers; a refusal to hold such employees accountable can be a reflection of a sordid managerial attitude towards customers, especially in relation to employees. In cases in which the refusal is explicitly stated to an already-offended customer, the slogan, “adds insult to injury” is applicable, with disastrous effects in terms of repeat business, and thus revenue. That management is in some cases so bad reflects on the primitive condition of the “science” of management in business schools. That a case in point occurred in Yale’s (Barnes and Noble) bookstore, not far from Yale’s School of Management, suggests the sheer distance between the “science” and practice of management.

The full essay is at "Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail."

Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

The full essay is at "Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S."

Starbucks Bucks Its Workers’ Labor Union

Even though more than 500 Starbucks shops had unionized by the end of 2024, it seems that the company’s management did not respect the new union very much. Unfortunately for the company, one implication that can be drawn is that the company’s management didn’t respect federal labor law very much too. For in not respecting its union enough to negotiate it on reducing employee work hours, the company violated federal law. The “smoking gun,” I submit, was that the management used dissimulation to respond to the government, rather than address the complaint directly.

The full essay is at "Starbucks Bucks Its Workers' Labor Union."

Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism

In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this),  but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable. 

The full essay is at "Starbucks"

See also: Bucking Starbucks’ Star

Rockford University: Paranoid on the Periphery

A young library supervisor of student workers at Rockford University insisted that Christmas is only a private holiday because it is exclusively religious after I had said that I wanted to finish the book by Christmas. When I pointed out that in this country (the USA) Christmas is recognized as a national holiday, the library employee said that it is only a holiday for the federal government (not the rest of us) and demanded that I define "country." Then, presumably out of ideological spite, while I was taking an hour walk break outside, he intentionally took the book from its proper place on a bookshelf and demanded that each time I want to use the book, I had to ask him for it. It was neither a reference nor a rare book. Surely he had not spied on every patron, or taken books from the shelves so any patron wanting to use a book again would have to ask him at the front desk; and yet, his boss, the provost of the small college whose office was off to the side of the library's entry hallway, rebutted my complaint about his subordinate and instead angrily threatened me that I had to respect library policies, or of course I could go to another library. No wonder that college was in financial trouble and could not keep its CEO. 

The full essay is at "Rockford University"

Major Cracks in Human Resources and Management in the American Grocery Industry Exposed during the Coronavirus Pandemic

For a certain personality-type, character, or mentality, it is easy to blame other people while remaining silent on one’s own mistakes (and mentality). This approach can be particularly harmful during a pandemic, for one’s own mistakes could be passing on the infectious illness. Such mistakes include refusing to maintain a physical distance from other people in public places and retail stores. As noxious as the blaming is, a more significant anthropological point may be that as a social and habitual animal, the human being may not be mentally advanced enough to keep a distance from other such animals even for self-preservation. I don’t think the instinctual urge for socializing exhausts the explanation, for the failure (and even refusal) to respect others enough to keep at a distance even when they ask surely involves weakness that manifests psychologically beyond merely having a bad attitude. Not even the artificial organizational-management systems our species has established are a match for the toxicity of a weakness that is even just passively aggressive toward other people. I contend that American management is susceptable to an even more severe weakness; one that foists organizational power as a club even on customers. 

The full essay is at "Human Resources and Management in the American Grocery Industry."

Democracy Held Hostage: The Case of a Street Name

Claims of systemic racism can also be attacks on democracy itself. In fact, if overdone, such claims may themselves be racist. The situation would then be that of racists holding democracy ransom in the mistaken belief that the whole must be consistent with the interests of one of its parts to be legitimate; otherwise, the democratic principle of majority rule is itself presumed to be invalid. The case of the change of a street's name in Kansas City, Missouri, can serve as a case study.

The full essay is at "Democracy as a Mechanism of Racism?"

Eight Good Behaviors of Managers: Googled by Google

In early 2009 at Google, "statisticians . . . embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. The 'people analytics' teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers. 'My first reaction was, that’s it?' says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president . . .  for human resources. 'The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,' Mr. Bock says. 'So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?' He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team. 'He’s brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team,' Mr. Bock recalls. Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching — the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved." (1)

The full essay is at "Good Behaviors of Managers."

1. Adam Bryant, "Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss," The New York Times, March 12, 2011.

Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders: The Case of Paterno at Penn State University

In January 2011, the illustrious football coach at Penn State University, Joe Paterno, learned that prosecutors were investigating his longstanding assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, for sexually assaulting young boys in the football team’s locker room. Paterno even testified before a grand jury on the matter that month. He had been informed of the rapes back in 1998, yet he had kept the pedophile on even though additional boys would be at risk in doing so. 

That same month—January 2011—Paterno also began negotiating to amend his contract that would not expire until the end of 2012. By August 2011, Paterno and the president of Penn State reached an agreement in spite of the fact that both were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation. “Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.” 

The university’s board was kept in the dark. Directors who raised questions were “quickly shut down.” In the end, the board gave the family virtually everything it wanted. The board even threw in free use of specialized hydrotherapy message equipment at the university for Paterno’s wife. In other words, Paterno (and his surviving family, following his death in January 2012) got an even better deal as the scandal came to include Paterno himself.

 Joe Paterno, head football coach at Penn State, viewed by a student as "Pa" in PA        Matt Rourke/AP

The full essay is at "Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders."

Starbucks: Petty Behind the Bar

Sometimes, as though the planets were to suddenly align, a coincidence occurs that so marvels the mind that one cannot help but wonder whether something more is involved in some larger picture. Such is the case for me today regarding the illustrious Starbucks company. A story in the Wall Street Journal so fits what I want to write about that I cannot help but wonder if my message were meant to spread. In short, my story involves Starbucks warming milk and the Journal's involves the company cooling it. It is as if yin and yang were finally in balance here, and yet I must conclude that the company has been in a state of disequilibrium. Chaos theory tells us that order and chaos can indeed coexist. Perhaps this is the nature of life itself, or at least human society. In any case, my case is that too many store-level managers and employees have been too petty, while higher management has looked the other way. 

 

                                                                    Charging More for "Customized" Drinks

Is Starbucks short-changing itself in being too petty in charging customers for "extras?"     Image Source: Bloomberg

The full essay is at "Bucking Starbucks' Star."

Visionary Leadership at Zynga

Faced with a stock price down 75 percent since its IPO and conflict with subordinates throughout 2012, Zynga’s chief executive Mark Pincus had plenty on his plate as he met with Bill Campbell of Apple in September of that year. Zynga investor and venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers had brought Campbell in to advise the CEO. While it is tempting to play around the edges and work on “communication processes” and hand out more employee stock-options, the bottom-line in such cases is typically the need to improve the products either simply to be better products or better tailored to changing consumer tastes and habits. Product development that can transform companies may result from the vision of a leader for whom strategy is simply a matter of reaching a destination already known.
 

Mark Pincus, CEO of Znyga. From this picture, it is hard not to like the guy.       Reuters

 

 

The full essay is at "Visionary Leadership: The Case of Zynga."

The Franchise: A Flawed Arrangement

The franchise arrangement combines the reach (and efficiency) of central advertising with the ability to respond to local differences. I suspect that the benefit from local flexibility is typically overdrawn, such that the value of the franchise arrangement itself is overstated. Meanwhile, the downside in local autonomy is, I suspect, understated. That downside includes the propensity to engage unethically based in part on lack of character-virtues and on the accurate perception of weak accountability within the franchise arrangement. The downside also comes into greater play than perhaps is realized because management on the local level can be rather bad in quality (from a managerial standpoint). In other words, slim pickings with regard to managerial talent can be a factor at the local level. Without mechanisms of accountability from “higher up,” front-line managers can get away with an astonishing amount of bad (and unethical) managing.

The full essay is at "The Franchise Agreement as Flawed."

When an Unethical Corporate Culture Becomes Dangerous in a Primitive U.S. State: Uber’s Self-Driving Cars in Arizona

A company with a horrendous reputation for having an unethical, and harsh, company culture is likely to be attracted to places in which lax regulatory oversight exists. A governmental view that regulations should be minimized dovetails with such a company. The two are a match, though not exactly made in heaven. The nexus can be situated closer to the ground, in a desert in North America, in Arizona in particular. In the case of Uber, which was testing its self-driving cars there in 2018, the flashpoint came in March, when such a car hit a pedestrian who was crossing a street without a sustained sidewalk. Suddenly society took another look, a much more hesitant look, at self-driving technology. Missed, however, was the nexus between Uber’s squalid culture/mentality and Arizona—the culpability of both having led to a perfect storm.

The full essay is at "Uber in Arizona: A Perfect Storm"

Balancing Company Rights and Worker Security through Public Policy

It would be a cruel joke were an airline to keep the extendable corridor back as the plane’s front door is opened and passengers are pushed out. Not even having a safety net below would neither be sufficient nor fair. When a government gives companies the flexibility to fire workers without yet having in place vocational safety nets, said government acts negligently and perhaps even with partiality to one side of the labor-management duality. At the very least, the flexibility to fire should be held off until the matter of economic security is finalized. 

The full essay is at "Balancing Company Rights and Worker Security."

Hierarchy Hampered Down in American Business

Without going into either the labor or management camp, a person can viably critique the operation of hierarchy itself in business organizations. The notion is typically associated with the concentration of power at “the top,” rather than the relation of middle-level managers to “retail” managers and their subordinates. Efficiency of power at a corporate headquarters does not necessarily translate into “downward” efficiency at the level of middle management. I submit that precisely this efficiency is rather severely compromised in American business.

The full essay is at "Hierarchy Hampered."

How to Cure a Dysfunctional Company Culture: The Case of Uber

Valued at close to $70 billion and operating in more than 70 countries, Uber was giving traditional taxi companies a ride for their money in early 2017 when it came to light just how Hobbesian the company’s culture had become. In February, an engineer who had left the company two months earlier “detailed a history of discrimination and sexual harassment by her managers, which she said was shrugged off by Uber’s human resources department.”[1] Crucially, she claimed that “the culture was stoke—and even fostered—by those at the top of the company.”[2] Interviews with other employees and reviews of internal emails, chat logs, and tape-recorded meetings revealed incidents typified by one manager groping a woman coworker’s breasts at a company retreat, a director shouting an anti-gay slur at a subordinate during an argument, and another manager threatening to beat an underperforming subordinate’s head in with a baseball bat. The operative question is whether anything can be done about the accepted pathology.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, which is available at Amazon.

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1. Mike Isaac, “Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture,” The New York Times, February 22, 2017.

2. Ibid.