I've been reading John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Great Crash 1929". I've been
going through the book rather quickly, but one passage slowed me right down.
It concerns the "no business" meetings that were held in the wake of what
happened in 1929. It took me way back and made me think about how many "no
business" meetings I attended during my thirty or so years of working in
government. Here's what Galbraith says about such meetings.
... Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They
need to instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action.
They find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in
private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no
business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum,
wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which
accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke
assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is
called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to
create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than
a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.
The fact that no business is transacted at a no-business meeting is
normally not a serious cause of embarrassment to those attending. Numerous
formulas have been devised to prevent discomfort. Thus scholars, who are great
devotees of the no-business meeting, rely heavily on the exchange-of ideas
justification. To them the exchange of ideas is an absolute good. Any meeting
at which ideas are exchanged is, therefore, useful. This justification is
nearly ironclad. It is very hard to have a meeting of which it can be said that
no ideas were exchanged.
Salesmen and sales executives, who also are important practitioners of
the no-business gathering, commonly have a different justification and one that
has strong spiritual overtones. Out of the warmth of comradeship, the interplay
of personality, the stimulation of alcohol, and the inspiration of oratory
comes an impulsive rededication to the daily task. The meeting pays for itself
in a fuller and better life and the sale of more goods in future weeks and
months.
The no-business meetings of the great business executives depend for
their illusion of importance on something quite different. Not the exchange of
ideas or the spiritual rewards of comradeship, but a solemn sense of assembled
power gives significance to this assemblage. Even though nothing of importance
is said or done, men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming
important. Even the commonplace observation of the head of a large corporation
is still the statement of the head of a large corporation. What it lacks in
content it gains in power from the assets back of it.
Ed
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