"Why do organizations fail in large numbers?" asks Biju Dominic. In the 1920s the lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 was 75 years, in the 1970s it was 27 years, while now it is down to just 15 years. "In the euphoria of the progress of the global economy or few national economies doing well, we conveniently forget the humongous failure rate of individual organizations. While a few unicorns are created every now and then, we forget that many more companies (some of them world leaders like Nokia) are biting the dust at an alarming rate," he writes. Why so? Companies select the best talent from a pool of applicants, train them rigorously and give each employee well defined responsibilities but still they fail. It is because companies are hierarchical, where power is concentrated at the top, while nation state have moved from monarchy to democracy, "where power was devolved to the individual citizen". Some companies, such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, take advantage of their size to adapt to new market demands, wrote Justin Fox in Bloomberg. While companies have a rigid structure based on the belief that all human beings are rational nation states have come to use behavioral sciences to serve their citizens better. Politicians create a narrative to get their citizens to support their policies, wrote Professor Ricardo Hausmann. But is it always for the good? Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a master at creating false narratives. First he accused officers of the armed forces of plotting a coup, which was thrown out by the courts, wrote Professor Dani Rodrik, and then he accused Fethullah Gulen of masterminding a failed coup. Now he is accusing European countries of being anti-Islam Nazis. Companies are often at the mercy of policies followed by politicians. Successive governments reduced the industrial heartland of the US into, what is known today, as the 'Rust Belt'. The final nail came in 2000 when the Republicans passed a bill giving China 'normal trade relations'. More than 5 million jobs were lost as cheap imports decimated US manufacturing. Hugo Chavez won 3 elections by using Venezuela's oil money for social schemes for the poor. Today its economy has collapsed and people are starving, despite having the largest oil reserves in the world. When companies fail they disappear, as happened to Enron, but a country cannot disappear. People try to survive somehow. Why are people ready to risk their lives in armed forces for nation states but employees do not show the same degree of loyalty, asks Dominic. Because you can get another job but you cannot ditch your country. Politicians never get punished for the harm they do. That is the tragedy.
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