Comments on: Dark matter and marketing

By: Charles Frith

Charles Frith — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:05:45 +0000

I’m going to wring my hands if there’s any Liberal cries going around!

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:55:52 +0000

I like the work of Ronald Inglehart (World Values Survey) in this realm. His recent publication, “Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy – The Human Development Sequence” uses WVS data to pursuasively demonstrate how, what I choose to call “personal autonomy”, is at the core of human motivations. I would define PA as simply “the ability to exercise one’s free will”. Liberalization of markets, subsequent increases in personal wealth, the emergence of choice economies and technology extend the individual’s ability and degree from which to operate autonomously. We seem to like it too. You could easily see doom in this emerging autonomy (as Putnam did). I do not. If there is any “dark matter” involved, it is our innate grasp of the idea that autonomy is inherently cooperative. That is, I can not increase my personal autonomy without granting the same to others.

By: Grant

Grant — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 16:26:51 +0000

Steve, Well, you nailed it. I had planned to talk about the structural integrity of the entire “system,” the systematicness of the entire system, in this paragraph, but the press of business (that old excuse) intervened and I went on automatic pilot for a moment. Now the question do I “go back in” and fix it or leave the failure out there. Will have to consult the blogger’s rule book and see what is called for. Thanks for the spot. Best, Grant

post script:

I have now changed the post in question. Here is the original paragraph:

Between the two of them, fragmentation and change create new forces that test the integrity of groups, organizations and units. To be sure, some of these now show signs of “material fatigue” and some are actually coming apart. But the fact that they are not all coming apart obliges us, I think, to ask whether some “dark matter” does not sustain them.

p.s., I like the point about corporation vs. professional loyalty had heard that before. That would make the corporation the wharf at which we happen to be moored.

Jen, nice one! And then the question where does grace come from. Grant

Lester, thanks, you got it too. My apologies. Thanks for the quality control! Best, Grant

By: Lester Hunt

Lester Hunt — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 13:16:43 +0000

In this context, “coming apart” would mean secession: members of an organization becoming non-members. The question is: why do accelerating rates of social change not cause this to happen? Partial answer: this will only happen if there is some precondition of organizational cohesion that takes time, and only if change occurs too fast for this whatever-it-is to happen. The inference I make is that organizations and the people in them are nimbler and lighter of foot than one might think. In other words, its not a mysterious “dark matter,” its that the gravitational force of normal matter is stronger than we think. Another way to look at it: The organizations that are notoriously slow are states and state-like entities (such as industrial monopolies), which do not need rapid adjustments because they have coercion on their side. In voluntary organizations, on the other hand, individual adjustments have to occur rapidly and they do: as swift as thought!

By: jens hilgenstock

jens hilgenstock — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:58:59 +0000

call it humanity, call it grace

By: steve

steve — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:09:57 +0000

I’m not sure what “coming apart” would mean. Let me suggest that a good working definition would be acting in a self-serving way that damages the interests of one’s neighbors. “Holding together” would then be acting in ways that upheld the norms and values of the relevant reference group.

From a worklife standpoint, the classic trend of the last 40 years or so in the US is a shifting of loyalty and reference away from one’s organization and toward one’s professional peer group. You see this in academia as well as business. Just as more CEOs and other top managers come from outside the organization, so do top professors circulate from instittution to institution. Even when people don’t actually move from one organization to another, their careers within an organization are strongly affected by their outside opportunities and outside reputations.

Doing things that hurt your credibility with your professional peer group are thus much more serious than doing things that get you in Dutch with powers in your local organization. Exceptions to this rule are organizations that pay significant rents (wages far above the next-best alternative for the individual) or where the culture is so unusual that the organization becomes the peer group (maybe the Salvation Army fits in here).

So maybe the dark matter (for work behavior) is professional peer group networks and professional reputation.
An important fact this would imply is that one’s behavior would be constrained by a more attenuated but numerous set of ties instead of a smaller number of intense ties. A lot more of what constrains behavior may be relations with people you interact with entirely through emails or…blog comments…hmmm.