Benjamin Fisch, 5/18 week responses

These readings make me wonder about a few issues. The reading suggests that “culture is powerfully shaped by incentives.” After reading this, this reminded me of capitalism, and the issue that the system of intense capitalism can sometimes lead to greed and abuse of power. This raised the issue for me that a culture of incentives can lead to a culture in an organization of greed. A culture of a greed is an issue to a business for example, because this culture will promote individuals under the organization to work towards their own selfish goals rather than work towards the agenda of the organization. I would be interested in exploring further the question of deciding whether or not the culture of incentive is the best option that an organization has. Although, capitalism and working towards and incentive is flawed its the system that we use, because we decided the capitalism is better than socialism or communism. I would be interested in exploring whether a culture of incentives or capitalism is better than a culture of socialism.

2. When reading “culture is consistent, observable patterns of behavior in organizations,” I am reminded of many of my own personal connections that relate. Aristotle said, “we are what we repeatedly do.” The first connection that comes to my mind is the mentality of my high school basketball team. We had a strong culture, and that was a culture of winning. We very rarely lost a game, and a lot of this stemmed from the mentality that we had of never giving up and our culture of winning. Another connection that I made after reading was that my family has its own culture as well. My family is small, but it can still serve as an organization. My family had a culture of togetherness and love. If one of us was having an issue, then we were all having an issue. On the other hand, if one of us was thriving we were all thriving. My family exhibits consistent, observable patterns of organization, which defines it as a culture.

2 Replies to “Benjamin Fisch, 5/18 week responses”

  1. I agree, in a world that is heavily swayed by power and success it does become hard to work for the people and serve a common goal. However, I do believe that there are certain communities that do not see this materialistic and greedy worldview and choose to grow the community and share their cultures. In the examples you give of your basketball team and your family it seems that no-one does anything without determining how it will affect the whole. If our world could adjust more to the idea that working together will strengthen us I believe that we would live in a place more encompassed by love and togetherness.

  2. Organizations have many different ways to incentivize certain kinds of behaviors–money is one, to be sure, but not the only option. Consider how promotion and tenure decisions are made–those can reinforce certain behaviors by rewarding them. And it’s not just big stuff–there are also decisions about whose office spaces get upgraded, where people sit in meetings, whose vacation requests are approved, who gets to have lunch with the boss, who’s invited out with the client, etc.

    All of these acts serve to create consistent, observable behaviors by ‘policing’ them–rewarding the stuff that’s in-bounds while punishing the stuff that’s out-of-bounds.

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