Quite honestly Keith this is balderdash!
Private corporations are certainly good at certain things--optimizing
certain fairly narrow forms of technical/organizational behaviours;
oreganizing resources in support of those optimizations; innovating,
particularly from an applied technology perspective within fairly narrow
parameters; but certainly democratic accountability is not one of them.
You seem to be making the fairly elemental mistake of mixing up
"consumers/stakeholders" i.e. folks with an interest in buying into and
getting some benefit from those rather narrowly defined
behaviours/innovations/resource optimizations; with "citizens" who have a
stake in all the other things that aren't included in those equations--like
the quality of (public) life, shared institutions, a common future and other
trivial stuff like that.
Mike Gurstein
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Christoph Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: Short Summaries on Civil Service and Climate Change
> Hi Chris,
>
> At 01:13 10/07/01 +0200, you wrote:
> >Hi Keith,
> >
> >> (CR)
> >> >Come on, Keith. If there is any hierarchical undemocratic top-down
> >> >organization, it is the modern private corporation.
> >> [KH:]
> >> Come on, Christoph. How many layers are there in the typical civil
service
> >> department? About 30 in the English CS. How many layers in the typical
> >> corporation? No more than 10 in the very largest I suggest.
> (CR)
> >See, there's the "UK-centrism" again. I was thinking of the Swiss civil
> >service, which is rather de-centralized and uses the "subsidiarity
> principle",
> >i.e. decisions are made as low in the hierarchy as possible. And most
> >importantly, the direct democratic control over lower and higher levels
is
> >pretty strong (e.g. direct referendums on projects of a certain size).
> >The number of layers isn't so high either -- for regional (cantonal)
> >purposes, about 4-6.
>
> I plead guilty to being UK-centric because the UK's civil service is the
> only one I am fairly knowledgeable about. However, you must agree that the
> Swiss system is not typical of nation-states. The UK's system is
> representative of most developed countries and serves as an apt example.
>
> (CR)
> >Compare this with a (transnational) corporation: centralized (with the
> >center far away), hardly any "subsidiary principle", **no democratic
> >control at all**, and rather *more* layers than a reasonably regional
> >government org. (even if it has less layers, the other points spoil
> >the whole thing..)
>
> If there is one thing that multinational corporations have learned in the
> last 20 years it is that local management and boards of directors are
> highly desirable. True, strategic decisions are taken at the top, but the
> profitability/efficiency of different units are very much up to local
> circumstances.
>
> "**no democratic control at all**" Really? What about shareholders?
What
> about investment funds? What about business analysts? What about the
press?
> What about pensions funds? What about regulators? These may not be
> democratic in the strictest one-person one-vote sense, but they represent
> ordinary people/consumers/pensioners and can exert powerful effects on
> multinationals.
>
> Two days ago it was announced that the (new) chief executive of Railtrack
> in the UK was going to receive a bonus of US$320,000 and share options
> worth $635,000. Since Railtrack has been incompetently managed hitherto,
> and since there's no evidence so far that the new chief executive is going
> to do the job any better, there was instant anger by shareholders and
> comments in the media. Today, he decided to relinquish his bonus and
> options. This sort of pressure on companies is growing, particularly in
the
> UK and the US.
>
> (KH)
> >> Besides, there
> >> is one flow of information that is absolutely vital at all times in a
> >> coporation -- that is from the bottom (customer) to the top.
> (CR)
> >It seems that the corporations more and more care about shareholders
> >rather than about customers. The customer can easily be ignored,
> >especially if the corporation has a (quasi-)monopoly or a de-facto
cartel.
> >Since there is no democratic accountability, customers (even groups of)
> >can't do much.
>
> Without well-satisfied customers shareholders won't receive dividends and
> management won't receive salaries. Yes, of course, cartels don't care a
> great deal for customers but they tend not to last for long in modern
times.
>
> I'll cut the rest because I'll only repeat myself.
>
> Keith H
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
