The political processes and cultural factors dominating the 1920’s Soviet Union have given birth to a social layer known as bureaucracy. It’s worth mentioning the fact that such layer already had its political and social importance in the former regime, prior to the revolution in 1917.
Let’s now highlight what this social group meant until the fall of the regime. Its role in economy, for example. All institutions were either managed or monitored by the Soviet bureaucracy. The bureaucrats didn’t own the company – it belonged to the state, remember? –, just ran it. Their privileges were of a different nature. Besides being granted with this special percentage of the results and also with other forms of distribution, they also had the power of deciding who was entitled to the privileges.
In a quite close parallel to this state of things in the Soviet Union, a very analogous process was taking place in American companies. The growth of businesses and the consequent expansion of plants, complexity of markets and technologies made room to the birth of a social layer of executives and CEOs (Chief Executive Officers), without which this institution we know as the American company would barely exist. It is astonishing to verify the number of analogies between the so-called high ranking executives in the capitalist company and their equivalents in the companies “on the other side”.
The American CEO doesn’t own the company either; as a matter of fact, the owner in most cases isn’t either a person, but a rather plural group of shareholders; even when this owner is a person, his role in the company is fairly discreet. Needless to number the privileges of the high ranking executives of a capitalist company, so prized by those who worship the “democratization of companies”. It’s funny to observe that this democracy seems to have been tailored for this group, for it doesn’t seem to be in a rush to come down to the lower levels of the company. So big is the power of this group that they can manage to preserve their benefits even when it goes against the interest of the shareholders, who, at least theoretically, are the owners of the business.
Any different bias on the judgement above will not deny the power and prestige of the layer of executives. Let’s now look at this phenomenon from the perspective of the recovery of the American economy.
It seems that the recovery of the American economy is facing an aggravating challenge: who can you actually count on inside the companies? It is stated that the layer of executives doesn’t like to think, and is much fonder of extra-sensorial stuff and self help books than of actual studying. It doesn’t even consider the existence of something called rethinking. People in this layer eat a lot, and their neurons must be drowning in fat; they have also got into extraordinarily huge debts counting on a future that is apparently fading out. All the stated above being true, comes the question the won’t remain silent: can you rebuild a company, or even a country, on such “army”?
As a matter of fact, this scenario isn’t a ‘privilege’ of the United States. The so-called American “normality” shaped the shiny happy ‘executiving’ standard in other countries too. Is anyone worried about this? Wouldn’t it be an opportune yet urgent matter to be approached in Davos? It seems that this “shifting” in economy is virtually impossible without the revitalization of companies. And how can we have healthy companies when their main executives are in desperate need of help?
What to do then, considering that you can’t conceive a company without a decisory board? Calling the Inquisitor certainly isn’t a solution. Neither is getting exorcists. It’s simply a matter of getting CEOs and the other senior managers to flexibilize their intelligences and thus clear the way to critical thinking and strategical rethinking. Such flexibilization, though, cannot be reached through mind-blowing conferences or sermons.
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