Though “all is forgiven” in this organization, one wonders about the residual humiliation associated with the penalty box and the accompanying loss of influence in the organization. This same manager later speaks of this organization as being a spiritual wasteland in which there is no animating vision of the future or much expression of courage. Shame, as Sennett observes, is not something that has an immediate and explicit impact on an organization. Rather it wears down those working in the organization and drains the organization of its spirit—especially under the turbulent conditions of the postmodern world.
In essence, the new capital (knowledge, autonomy, shame) that has been identified by Drucker, Bell and Sennett belongs to the employee and not to the organization. It is highly portable and not easily controlled by those who own and run the organization. Administrators and managers must rely on the information that is given to them by staff members and information specialists (computer programmers, program auditors, engineers). They often have to compete with the leaders of other organizations for these high-paid custodians of their organization’s information. Thus, the only power that many leaders of postmodern organizations hold over their key employees is psychological (rather than either economic or positional) in nature. They can give approval and encouragement, or withhold approval and attempt to shame their employees (through indifference or indirect public exposure) since they can’t control or hold them any other way.
Commitment to Learning
How do members of postmodern organizations effectively confront these elusive problems of knowledge and shame? In part, the answer resides in the simple recommitment to employees. We find this recommitment manifest in tangible form through a transition from the dispensable employee to the learning organization. Rather than looking elsewhere for knowledge and skills, the learning organization finds ways to identify or create that knowledge or skill set within the organization. Any contemporary organization that is doing its job with regard to public relations will include in its institutional promotional piece a statement about education and training. Dusting off Alvin Toffler, the brochure will speak about the great demands being placed on the employees of the organization to master new technologies and cope with accelerating change. In the postmodern world, however, a commitment to learning must move far beyond what was said (and usually not acted upon) in the modern world.
The postmodern condition requires that an organization include a commitment to learning in its mission statement and that this organization prepare its employees for a new kind of learning that can accommodate the second order changes described in the next section of this book. While reflection and learning are an enduring element of the human condition, they have never been in greater demand (nor as anxiety-provoking) as they are today: [xxxvii]
“It cannot be denied that, in a primordial form, human anxiety is bound up with the very advent of reflection and is thus as old as man himself. Nor do I think that anyone can seriously doubt the fact that, under the influence of reflection undergoing socialisation, the men of today are particularly uneasy, more so than at any other moment of history.”
