I like the notion of corporate stewardship being a principle of “enlightened” business. When we look at the seven basic characteristic of life we see that business responds to its environment, grows, changes, reproduces, has a metabolism and maintains homeostasis, it is made of cells, and passes traits to offspring. A business is not just a living organism on the evolutionary scale a business, much like humans, is a complex multi-cellular organism. And when we consider that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts we can see that a business is a lot more powerful than one person. All living organisms do not have hearts, plants are alive but do not have hearts, but any living animal must have a heart or at least of body part that serves the same function.
While I love the direction this article goes, I find it potentially too academic and complex. The bottom line is all humans want community, the opportunity to make a large contribution, and they want choice in how they meaningfully contribute. These all work together rather than compete. I would hesitate to endorse a new model or template but rather support organizations in their own context to create these 3 conditions for human and organization vitality.
COMMENTS
BY Jessica
ON June 22, 2015 10:22 PM
I like the notion of corporate stewardship being a principle of “enlightened” business. When we look at the seven basic characteristic of life we see that business responds to its environment, grows, changes, reproduces, has a metabolism and maintains homeostasis, it is made of cells, and passes traits to offspring. A business is not just a living organism on the evolutionary scale a business, much like humans, is a complex multi-cellular organism. And when we consider that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts we can see that a business is a lot more powerful than one person. All living organisms do not have hearts, plants are alive but do not have hearts, but any living animal must have a heart or at least of body part that serves the same function.
BY Anne Murray Allen
ON April 15, 2016 03:07 PM
While I love the direction this article goes, I find it potentially too academic and complex. The bottom line is all humans want community, the opportunity to make a large contribution, and they want choice in how they meaningfully contribute. These all work together rather than compete. I would hesitate to endorse a new model or template but rather support organizations in their own context to create these 3 conditions for human and organization vitality.