Guest Blogger: William R.
Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change,
Inc.
What is changing
in the world? Is it people? Or is it the “tools” — including our “social
tools” — that people have invented to meet every level of human needs? People’s needs range from survival and
security needs, to social and political needs, and from individual personal
needs, to the highest level of human development. Changes in these “tools” are having a
profound impact on everyone’s daily life.
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| The effect of advancing technology is to displace labor. |
As a graphic
example, take the effect of advancing technology. As machines take over more and more of the
burden of production, it becomes harder and harder to find a job, any job, regardless
how qualified you might be.
What happened at
the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago is nothing to what is
happening today. Then, being replaced by
a machine just meant finding another, lower-paying job. Now it means not having a job, period.
As Louis Kelso
pointed out more than half a century ago, however, if a machine takes away a
worker’s job, why can’t the worker buy the machine and let it work for him or
her? As an owner, the (former) worker would
receive the profits from the work the machine does.
And if the
changes in productive tools have wreaked such havoc, what about the changes in
social tools, especially society’s only legitimate monopoly, the State? Governments that were instituted to “form a
more perfect union [and] establish justice” are more concerned with controlling
people.
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| Justice: Hope for the future. |
Governments do
this by manipulating the money, tax, and education systems to try and meet
people’s needs directly. What they
should be doing is maintaining the institutional environment within which
people can meet their own needs through their own efforts by becoming
productive through their labor as well as their capital, especially when they
can’t find a meaningful job.
Given, then, the seismic
technological, social, political, and economic changes in the 21st Century that
are reshaping industries and decimating workforces, how can leaders build
effective, adaptable, “Just
Third Way” organizations that continually strive for “excellence” in an ownership culture away from the
prevalent wage-slave system?
This has become an increasingly frustrating
challenge for today’s leadership. Driven to generate quarterly profits, with
the horizon of strategic plans rushing ever closer, business leaders end up basing
their decision-making on guesswork and snap judgments. There’s never enough
time to develop talent, long-range strategy, or succession plans.
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| No, in the JBM Upside-down Pyramid, no one is an island. |
If they are to lead with excellence to achieve
the long-term success of the company, leaders today will need to start thinking
in new ways to address the new things of the modern world. To paraphrase
slightly, they need to acknowledge that, “No leader is an island,” but works
with others and with the system to achieve results in which everyone
participates.
We’re not going
to look at changes in our institutions today, however. What we’re going to look at is how to deal
with changes in our institutions most effectively, so as to achieve excellence
in a world that seems so far from achieving it.
Within the
framework of the Just Third Way, we find the most effective means of dealing
with change in the
three principles of economic justice.
Economic justice
is a subset of social justice. It encompasses the moral principles that guide
people in creating, maintaining and perfecting economic institutions. These
institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts,
exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent
material foundation for economic subsistence.
The ultimate
purpose of economic justice is to free each person economically to develop to
the full extent of his or her potential, enabling that person to engage in the
unlimited work beyond economics, the work of the mind and the spirit done for
its own intrinsic value and satisfaction.
The triad of
interdependent principles of economic justice that serve as the moral basis of
binary economics is:
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| CESJ's logo: Justice, justice, justice thou shalt pursue. |
·
Participative Justice (the input
principle),
·
Distributive Justice (the out-take
principle), and
·
Social Justice (the feedback and
corrective principle).
Social justice,
the third principle, as it pertains here to economic systems, encompasses and
operates at all levels, from the macro-level of a global economy, to the
micro-level of every institution and enterprise, and every member within them.
Social Justice
places a personal responsibility on every individual to organize with others to
correct their economic institutions when there is a barrier to, or violation
of, participative justice or distributive justice. This is true for every worker inside a
company, of course, but even more so in the “greater world” outside at every
level of politics and key institutions at the local, regional, national, and
international level.
In their book, The Capitalist Manifesto, Louis Kelso and Mortimer
Adler referred to the feedback principle as the “principle of limitation” (or
“anti-monopoly” or “anti-greed” principle). This refers to the limitation on
the exercise of a
person’s property, such that one’s property may not be used to harm the person
or property of another, violate participative or distributive justice, or harm
the general welfare. “Social justice” exists when participative and
distributive justice work fully for every person within a free and just
marketplace.
Most companies
these days, however, are not keeping up with the times. They are structured in ways that do not allow
for positive change to conform the institution to the principles of economic
justice. Instead, the ownership,
management and governance structures and policies are designed to keep
ownership and control in the hands of a very few people . . . even when the
company is technically broadly owned!
Outside the
individual company, things are even worse.
The money and tax systems of all countries are designed to keep
ownership and control in the hands of a few. Is it any wonder that most leaders
will never be able to deal with change in an effective or just manner? How, then, can they possibly lead with
excellence in today’s changing world?
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| Servant Leadership |
Within the
framework of the Just Third Way, however, today’s rising generation of business
leaders need not follow a path that should have been abandoned long ago: the
wage system that produces conflict, waste and inefficiency. They can have a just, third way philosophy
that will produce cooperation, conservation and efficiency.
New leaders can
begin adopting and teaching as cornerstones of their business success a
justice-based leadership philosophy consistent with the principles of economic
justice that values ownership, participation, development and empowerment of
all team members. With their team, they
can start building and perfecting justice-based management and governance
structures — linking every member to the rewards and risks, rights and
responsibilities of being a real owner.
Economic justice
need not stop within the walls of a business. Restructuring our basic economic and social
institutions according to universal principles of justice, and spreading
ownership opportunities and power to every member of the human family, are
essential if we are ever to achieve global peace and prosperity. Those
universal values will be the keys to leading with excellence in a changing
world.
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