by Prof. Jan Teunen

The present is a time of profound change. The consequences of unremitting production and consumption and the one-sided subordination of our life under the primacy of business as well as the compulsion for growth and technical progress have reached such a degree of separation and one-sidedness, of insecurity and distraction, that people start following a different route of thought. They become more critical, more demanding, are better informed. The consciousness of many people moves towards a higher level. That’s why customers increasingly want to test the values and attitudes of companies before entering into a business relation. If such a test is not possible because the company is wearing a mask and is deceiving the markets, nothing will be purchased. People are sick and tired of deception, they are disappointed, they disapprove of monkey business.

That’s why companies need to become transparent. They have to strive for a coherent oneness of thought, word, action and object, for an authentic identity. Such an identity cannot evolve without philosophy nor without the love for wisdom – ethics – put into practice. Once companies pay as much attention to their ethical responsibility as they do to their business responsibility, a corporate culture can develop in which people will try to take everything into consideration in their entrepreneurial actions, i.e. the entire wholeness, the oikos. This is the house of Earth with its many rooms – the living environments for plants, animals and human beings. Such corporate cultures contribute to achieving a natural, social and individual appropriateness. Companies whose economic power stems from cultural, ethical and aesthetic power, have seminal potential for the future and will be secure in the future. They are protected by their culture, they are a magnet for talent and a catalyst for creativity, productivity and thus for stakeholder value. It is remarkable that such a culture frequently develops in family-owned companies. There, values are actually lived in a way that spans generations, and they are handed on through culture. That’s how tradition comes about. There, you can find a particular degree of the desire and willingness to shape society, to provide employees with a socially secure environment, with the care of a family, and all this out of a true and heartfelt solidarity.

Bye-bye Monkey Business.
Bye-bye Monkey Business. Companies with a culture of exploiting resources belong to the past. But even they have a culture. This goes to show that the term “corporate culture” in itself is neutral, for every company has a corporate culture. The term corporate culture can be pulled any which way like a rubber band. That’s why companies can only be differentiated by the kind and degree of their culture. Their corporate culture is composed of values, opinions, targets and habits. But which ones? A good method to test the culture of a company is to take a look at its expression. If e.g. the architecture and the way the offices are furnished are dominated by business rationality, the corporate culture as a rule will be one of resource exploitation. In such a case, the working spaces are part of a corporate culture that does not allow the emotions of the people who work there to stabilize. In such an environment people tend to get sick, because the cultural environment does not respond. They fall back to their emotions of fear, anger and grief, and that is dramatic. All the more so since back in the 13th century, the office was invented explicitly in order to protect what is valuable. Monks used to put part of their monk’s habit, the “burra” (= origin of the French term “bureau”, meaning “office”) between the coarse, unplaned wood of the work tables and their books in order to protect the valuable leather and parchment book covers.

And even economy itself was originally intended to be an ethical and moral way to guide human beings under the roof of one house. There are many places that tolerate that up to 50% of human resources investments are just blown out without effect because the quality of the environment and the quality of interpersonal relationships are lacking. Because human beings are refused protection, because their company is not being cultivated and because the feeling of belonging together has gone away. It is incomprehensible that many companies still try to save money on their furniture. This is penny-wise, yet pound-foolish – this is monkey business. The friction losses caused by this are the symptom of a cultural neurosis that is experienced as a loss of motivation. But loss of motivation is something that companies cannot afford when they want to reach ambitious goals, including realizing a concept of sustainability.

It is motivation that produces quality, and inversely it is precisely quality that creates motivation. Motivation is a result of tasks that make sense, of responsibility and of a certain quality in dealing with things and in the togetherness with human beings. When the houses of companies are ordered in such a way, they have culture. In such a culture, potentials can unfold and the human beings working there can fulfill their strongest desires, which are:

1. Feeling connected to something that is bigger than oneself
2. Developing oneself towards freedom

The way in which rooms for living and working are furnished can contribute considerably to fulfilling these desires. It can create identity and give people the feeling to be appreciated by their employer. According to a survey conducted by “Management Today”, 95% of employees regard the design quality prevalent in their workplace as an indication for whether or not they are appreciated by their employer. But only 39% actually work in an environment that gives them the feeling to be appreciated … Each piece of furniture has a direct connection to the person. It can arrest them in their office, or it can induce them to engage in natural movement. In order for people to be able to unfold freely, the furnished room needs to be barrier-free, both for the flesh and for the spirit. In such an environment the human being will be inspired to become the entrepreneur of one’s own potentials.

While I am writing these lines, my iPad receives an email with the value index 2011. This index maps the value cosmos of Internet users. At the very top of this list of values ranks freedom, followed by nature. On the third place is authenticity. What a perfect endorsement for my statement that corporate bullshit and monkey business are mega-out. Bye-bye!