Monday, December 11, 2006
Moral Mazes
If you're curious about why individuals in big corporations behave differently than they do as individuals, you've gotta read Moral Mazes, by Robert Jackall. I found it when I was at AT&T trying to figure out how the culture worked. The closest thing I had at the time was Dilbert. And my own discordant experience. After a long search for something more analytic, Phil Agre, an expert in the ways of institutions, pointed me towards Moral Mazes (1988, Oxford). It was so on-target I became an acolyte. My 1999 review of Moral Mazes is still on line. Lately I've convinced myself that MM is about more than bigcos, its lessons apply to organizations from AARP to zoning boards.
My previous post was about empirical study, this one is too. Jackall is the Margaret Mead of the modern unreconstructed American Corporation. He was rejected by thirty-six corporations before he found one that would let him come observe who decided, who got the credit, who got promoted, and why. He went. He saw. He wrote.
I'm delighted that my friend Aaron Swartz has found Moral Mazes "one of my very favorite books". Aaron has just blogged two of the most instructive nuggets in Moral Mazes. He says the book explains, "precisely how [a corporation] operates, with the end result of explaining how so many well-intentioned people can end up committing so much evil."
Recently Jackall, who I've befriended in recent years, sent me a review of the book that recently appeared in some British business journal. (Aside: The digital document he sent me was so DRMed I couldn't cut and paste, and with warnings about reuse emblazoned on every page that I dasn't include the journal's name.) The thrust of the piece was that Jackall's book, 20 years old next year, is an under-recognized classic. Uh huh.
Now go read Aaron's posting.
My previous post was about empirical study, this one is too. Jackall is the Margaret Mead of the modern unreconstructed American Corporation. He was rejected by thirty-six corporations before he found one that would let him come observe who decided, who got the credit, who got promoted, and why. He went. He saw. He wrote.
I'm delighted that my friend Aaron Swartz has found Moral Mazes "one of my very favorite books". Aaron has just blogged two of the most instructive nuggets in Moral Mazes. He says the book explains, "precisely how [a corporation] operates, with the end result of explaining how so many well-intentioned people can end up committing so much evil."
Recently Jackall, who I've befriended in recent years, sent me a review of the book that recently appeared in some British business journal. (Aside: The digital document he sent me was so DRMed I couldn't cut and paste, and with warnings about reuse emblazoned on every page that I dasn't include the journal's name.) The thrust of the piece was that Jackall's book, 20 years old next year, is an under-recognized classic. Uh huh.
Now go read Aaron's posting.
Technorati Tags: AaronSwartz, MoralMazes, Organizational Culture, RobertJackall
Comments:
I concur with the commenters at Aaron's blog who attribute the cause of these issues to human organization itself. Any hierarchical organization, governmental, non-governmental, religious--exhibits these same sorts of problems.
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# posted by 
: 12/11/2006 4:32 PM
: 12/11/2006 4:32 PM
