Temperatism, Volume I

Carrie Foster

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781631577727
• eBook ISBN: 9781631577734
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

What if organization's pursued something other than an economic agenda? It may appear on the surface that this is a na•ve question, but it is a fundamental question about the role of organizations in our society. Why has the capitalist profit and neo-liberal agenda become so entrenched in Western society that we can't possibly imagine anything different? The evidence that the system is flawed is plentiful and yet we still hang onto what we know, a little like a relationship that has past it's best before date but is not yet damaging enough for a parting of ways. Do we ignore the evidence out of fear or because there appears to be no viable alternative? If growth and profit is part of the equation then what alternative is there to capitalism? This book explores what different might look like and in doing so proposes an alternative paradigm. It seeks to begin a dialogue about whether, if growth and profit are an important part of the equation, then 'Important for what purpose?' What follows is a proposition of an alternative agenda for organizations, one of doing good and the introduction of a new business framework - Temperatism.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular . . . it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

—Uta Hagen

2016 was a year of seismic change. It wasn’t just the deaths of many well-known celebrities that had filled Facebook streams. The online debates and media recoiled through a range of issues such as the migrant crisis, Brexit, ISIS, Russia, Kim Jong-un’s missiles, and Trump. For years neo-liberal stability had dulled the populace into a secure blanket of apathy and disengagement with political processes. This was the way things were done, and there wasn’t any way in which the ordinary folk could change things. Fastforward to today and a seismic shift has taken place. Whether it is worldwide protests, political rallies, or the swell of populism, what has been and what will be is a vibrant battle-ground of competing ideas and interests. The current instability in the world has reignited debate about how the world should be run and questions about the validity of the world order. People are searching for a new way of doing things. I’m not sure many people are necessarily looking for a new ideology, but there is a growing demand for us to separate ourselves from what had been an accepted norm in the way that humanity conducts itself on planet Earth.

Since the 2008 credit crunch, the world seemed to have entered a permanent state of gloom and depression. There is a dearth of worries consuming individuals and institutions: climate change, austerity, terrorism, and globalization. Sovereign nations are no closer to fighting off the scourge of sovereign debt, and despite evidence of greater levels of material wealth and prosperity still being present, the backlash is a result of increased levels of introspection in regard to the social failings that our current system has created. As the leaders of Western liberal democracies examine the popular uprising and increasing criticism of the systems failings, they are faced with questions about what decisions blew them off course and whether they might have actually been, whisper it, wrong.

Occasionally humanity comes to a crossroads where a new generation of thinkers and writers rise up and begin to question the way the world is organized. These thinkers are no more qualified than your average Joe to bring words of wisdom to the masses. But they are passionate and they believe enough in what they think the society is thinking to stick their heads above the parapet and stand up to be counted. As the world population exceeds the 7.5 billion mark, our voices can easily be lost in the cacophony of sound, especially in a world that has embraced mass communication, enabled by the digital age. The constraints we face are not in our ability to think, nor in our ability to communicate what we think, but rather in our ability to be heard above the noise. To call out in a way that makes society sit up and take notice. To make people care enough to convert the call to arms into action.

In writing this book, it is hoped that the ideas expressed within will seed a movement that the expression of the #changeforgood idea will catch hold and spread like a modern day pandemic. It is hoped that the ideas will reach the ears and hearts of those who are willing to take a stand, and they will join together to demand the world takes notice and makes a shift that puts people first. There is some urgency, to this mission, we cannot and must not delay, “severe resource constraints and dramatically shifting demographics means significant challenges ahead” (CIPD, 2012). We don’t have time to remain idle and pretend that these things don’t matter anymore. Ashford, writing in 2010, stated that “in approximate terms 1% of the population owns 50% of the capital wealth and 10% own 90%. That leaves the remaining 90%, who own little or no capital (half of whom have a negative net worth), with little or no time for thoughtful politics as they scramble for the 10% of wealth that is left.” Today, less than a decade later, the shift in these figures provide a sobering reality check on the rapid growth of inequality in our world. A report by Oxfam in 2016 offered these startling facts:

• 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population
• In 2015, the 1 percent owned more than the 99 percent
• The wealth of the world’s poorest population had fallen by 38 percent since 2010

(Oxfam, 2016)

If the world is going to avoid a total system failure, catastrophic levels of social unrest, and a chaotic and possibly war-ridden retreat from globalization, change must happen. The question is whether that change can be a good change and whether the change will be for good, preventing us from returning to the way things are today.

CHAPTER 2

Why Now? Why Temperatism?

This is the question I want everyone to ask yourself every single day when you come with something you feel that needs to be done: if not now, then when? And if not me, then who?

—Mick Ebeling

Historically, it seems that in many cases the -ism’s and -ology’s occurred first as a conversation in coffee shops, before eventually becoming formalized in the written word to be debated and discussed by a wider audience. But previous ideologies were restricted to the philosophers, the academics, and those who were classed as the thinkers of the day. Today, the forum for debate is wider, the opportunity to contribute to thinking no longer restricted to the “thinking classes” but to anyone who can think. Temperatism might be an idea that, for the first time in human social history, can be debated, formed, and built upon using the shared values and beliefs of anyone, anywhere. Social media, the World Wide Web, and global communication offer the opportunity for anyone who is interested to join the debate.

Sometimes the theories and concepts explored by writers touch an understanding that makes people stand up and listen. They verbalize what people are feeling and connect an intellectual understanding to create a powerful mix that can change cultures, improve society, and affect the world. This book is being written in response to ideas that are readily available to anyone who cares to research them. The opinions and ideas expressed are as a direct result of watching news programs, interacting on social media, working in organizations, and having a personal curiosity of social humanist thinking. It is also being written as a result of frustration as to why humanity refuses to change course despite the mounting evidence that we are heading for the edge of a perilous cliff that could end our very existence.

The global recession caused by the 2008 credit crunch and continuing sovereign debt issues provide, perhaps, the greatest opportunity for a discussion into the appropriateness of Western capitalism as a global model of human interaction and its associations with democratic values and individual freedom. “We are thus sitting on the ruins of several failed paradigms: the real socialism, the reformed golden age capitalism, the neo-liberal market fundamentalism, the Washington consensus and last but not least, social democracy. Paradoxically, one may draw a positive conclusion from this dismal situation: we are condemned to invent new paradigms for the twenty-first century” (Sachs, 2009). Today, we can look back on a decade of hedonistic pursuit of year-on-year growth enabled by perverse levels of individual, corporate, and government debt, the demise of socialist and communist economic and political systems, and the rise of the knowledge economy and find ourselves in a world that is suffering from a capitalist hangover of global proportions.

Politicians and the public are demanding that the global economy be up and running, that recovery should be happening now, and the fact that it isn’t, a decade after the crunch, is a frustration. The issue now, of course, is not that the economy isn’t doing well at creating wealth; it’s just the economy is not doing well at creating wealth for most of the world’s population. There are plenty of symptoms that all is not well—high living costs, wage stagnation, austerity programs, levels of sovereign and personal debt, etc.—but no one seems willing to pinpoint what the real illness is. We all know that the Western economies are ill, but they are all avoiding the obvious in regard to where to start to make it better.

The gross malfeasance of the banking sector, which led to the 2008 credit crunch, is not surprising when weighing the balance of power, regulation, and the pursuit of growth. Finance, which became so critical to the running of our economic system and has an important role socially, was transformed into a dangerous vehicle driven by fortune, greed, and competition. The circumstances of the recession were made worse by the penetration of financial influence into the realms of political power. Banking powerhouses were wooed by politicians and despite the bank’s aggressive pursuit of personal enrichment were protected from their ­excesses and yet continue to fail to serve a useful purpose in regard to social contribution. The tragedy of our age is that the players in this game continue to have political influence and exert undue pressure to be ­allowed to continue their aggressive pursuit of profit and growth, without fear of the consequences and refusing to engage with their critics. There is no debate, only capitalism.

In a world where we expect things to be ready in an instant, it is impossible to galvanize a popular movement when you can’t offer a quick fix to our problems. Politicians are under pressure, because there is an expectation that things should be fixed, more should be done, waiting for recovery is not acceptable. At the same time, the same people who are calling for more also believe that small government and free enterprise is the answer to the economic problems we are facing.

When it comes to electoral cycles and the media coverage of political opponents blaming each other because the promised change hasn’t happened, the public has very often been placed into a position where they are forced to take a back seat driver position. The electorate, ­unhappy that change hadn’t happened fast enough, doesn’t seem to accept the fact that such deep-rooted problems, which have been decades in the ­making, are unlikely to have been turned around in a few years. In ­between elections, politicians tinker around the edges rather than tackling the systemic ­issues, which are causing the problems in the first place. The ­opposition and the public complain that the government, which has been in power only for a brief period of time, isn’t “doing enough” to fix things. The ­problem is that “giving it time” and taking a root cause approach to change doesn’t make a great sound bite for politicians dealing with a ­nation that is ­suffering now and wants things fixed.

Trump’s pledge to Make America Great Again appeals to the needs of the forgotten majority who are exasperated with broken political pledges and what they feel is a broken system. The problem is the solutions ­offered: build the wall, throw out immigrants, drain the swamp, ­actually don’t tackle the real problem. The ideological root upon which the ­system is built is capitalism.

The truth is that capitalism has made us all expect things to happen quickly. Short termism is at the center of our culture. It is extremely difficult to convince people that they should delay fulfilling what they want now, to not indulge for the sake of the long term or even for the sake of others. We want things to be right, right now. The 2008 recession is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1920s. It took 15 years for the world economy to recover from the trading excesses that contributed to the Great Depression. The recession we find ourselves in now is a result of the introduction of new rules that saved capitalism but resulted from New Deal rules designed to stop excess, being redacted. The credit crunch was almost a decade ago and yet we are expecting our governments to have sorted out the mess already. It is not realistic to expect politicians (who were elected after the problems started) to have all the answers and be able to do things that will have an immediate impact. The seeds of the recession were actually planted almost 40 years ago, when Reagan and Thatcher pursued a policy of muscular entrepreneurialism: “massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of unions, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing and competition in public services” (Monboit, 2016). This in turn led to the increasing financialization of the Western economies. The City and Wall Street have replaced the nonfinancial industrial and business sectors as the main power players in our society. Political parties and society seem incapable or unwilling to tackle or reform a system that is challenging the very rules of democratic citizenship.

Furthermore, consumers have got used to instant gratification, hence why there have been increasing levels of household debts. We no longer save up for something but rather operate on a see it, want it, buy it process because the new generation does not have the patience to wait to give things time to work themselves through the system. We want results and we want them now. The problem is that instant gratification is addictive. It is not because we don’t want to wait; it is that we can’t wait because the world we live in moves too fast. There is little to recommend in the way of a cure for short-term gratification that doesn’t come with an end point that reads along the lines of “stop it.” But sometimes change is as simple as that. Simply indulging in our base interests and allowing us to be ruled by peer pressure to act with civility can cure many of life’s social ills.

Patience, of course, teaches us the value of delaying gratification, a skill necessary for maturity. Patience can help develop the ability to think through and resolve problems; it counteracts impulsivity and builds self-esteem, helping individuals hold themselves together in the face of difficulties. The value of patience lies in its ability to lead to inner calm and emotional strength of character. Patience helps us learn resilience, fortitude, self-containment, and the ability to avoid self-destructive behaviors. These are qualities needed for emotional maturity and sustainable performance. But patience relies on something more meaningful than simply waiting. It relies on us being in relationship with others, considering the needs of others as well as our own, and corporately changing the behavioral norms that will be necessary for the success of doing good in society. The problem is, of course, even as inhuman treatment and hateful behavior is tackled, it doesn’t disappear; instead it exists in the shadows and then every now and again reemerging to remind us that we are not all that civil or good after all. While huge portions of the human race are exposed to high levels of deprivation and horror, for many of us our lives are dominated by first world problems. It is no good expecting separate individuals in society to deny instant gratification, if their neighbors, friends, family, colleagues, and peers are all indulging in self-gratification. Change will not happen if it is done individually. AA meetings have demonstrated the power of peer pressure in maintaining a change of behavior even for those in the grip of addiction. “Few major societal ills, in fact, are immune. Since our peers shape so much of our behavior, so much of it can be changed with peer pressure. This includes the pieces of what we do that then affect those around us. Peer pressure changes you and in turn you change a community, a bureaucracy, a culture, a government—a world” (Rosenburg, 2011).

Patience is also necessary in organizations where projects are expected to deliver results immediately—quick wins are important for any project or intervention that is delivered. But often the real prize may take months if not years to appear. But if the project doesn’t deliver in this financial reporting quarter, it is deemed to have failed. In organizational and governmental life, old projects are rejected before they are embedded and new projects are started. In truth we no longer know which projects are delivering what results because we don’t wait around long enough to let success show itself. When success comes, we can no longer be sure what has delivered the success because we have started and rejected so many projects in the time between “then” and “now” that there is no clear path to demonstrate cause and effect.

The current focus of organizations and governments and the capitalist system is the result of what Douglas Holmes refers to as “Fast Capitalism” (Holmes, 2002). The pursuit of short-term goals and the market reaction to quarterly results have replaced long-term measures that benefit people, the organization, and society as a whole. Investing in skills and developing people’s potential is ignored because people become little more than arms, legs, and body that have tasks to do, a number on a spreadsheet that can be slashed with a tap on the keyboard. The pursuit of quick profit means that fast return on investment is demanded, but the delivery of short-term goals means no resource is given to projects that add value in the long term, and the end result is profit returns today are made at the expense of long-term prosperity.

The fundamental issue to these systemic pains is that currently no alternative argument or any reason exists for capitalism to stop, since the accumulation of wealth and acquisition of material goods has no end. There isn’t an argument to finish what has been started when the global agenda and political, social, and economic arguments remain centered on profit and self-interest. In a world where “if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough” is the central tenet of our existence, there is no need for a new ideology, or for us to seek out change. However, “the unbalanced structure of economic growth over the last decade has fed straight through to a disastrous social geography, bypassing the least advantaged in ways that they have done nothing to deserve while indiscriminately rewarding the wealthy” (Hutton, 2011). The problems that we are experiencing in the world, economically, socially, and politically, are a direct result of our pursuit of a finance-centric society that began with the foundations of a free-market economy laid during the Reagan and Thatcher years. What has emerged since then is “the exponential growth of the financial services industry,” which has not only “created a financial-driven business environment,” but also impacted our political, economic, and social culture to focus and be “dominated by its financial purpose to generate money and purely financial value” (CIPD, 2012).

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Why Now? Why Temperatism?
• Chapter 3: Where Are We Now?
• Chapter 4: Introducing a Different Agenda—Temperatism
• Chapter 5: Doing Good and What That Means
• Chapter 6: More Than Capitalism with a Heart
• Chapter 7: Property and Employment
• Chapter 8: Attempting to Achieve Economic Democracy
• Chapter 9: Good Citizenship Is Good Business
• Chapter 10: People and Purpose Before Profit
• Chapter 11: The Chequered History of CSR
• Chapter 12: The Place of Organizations in Society
• Chapter 13: Conclusions
• References
• Index