[lbo-talk] Maximise or satisfice? (was:stupid americans?

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Mon Sep 27 13:58:34 PDT 2004


Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


>There is a considerable body of organizational research that disagrees with
>the above statements. Both neo-classicals and marxoids agree that
>capitalism is about profit maximization and both presuppose perfect
>information and rationality in that pursuit. The instituitonalists, on the
>other hand, focus on how real people and real organizations actually work in
>real life. What they find is that beneath the ritualistic speeches about
>efficiency, optimal performance and profit maximization there is a lot of
>group-think, mediocrity, and the performance that is barely satisfactory.
>In other words, corporate officers tend to go with the crowd, ape each
>other, do the minimum expected of them, break the rules whenever they can
>get away with it, sometimes get lucky - but then at the end of the day talk
>about their own prowess, vision and extraordinary abilities to supersize,
>maximize, economize, rationalize and do good things in every which way.
>
Absofuckinglutely. I spend most of my time trying to make things work despite the destructive interference of my managers, and their managers....it goes up five levels. On the other hand, Miles is also correct. Were it not for the fact that at the grunt level there are intelligent, capable people, this system would crash and burn.

Joanna



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