Double Entry Journal # 11

Read High Noon: Chapters 7, 8, & 9

1.     Why are networks better than hierarchies?

In periods of intense and complex change, traditional hierarchies fall short the future belongs to flatter, faster, more network-like organizations. Three bad things result when hierarchies find themselves surrounded with changes. First, they lack flexibility and are slow to adapt to external changes. Second, people in such organizations are used more as information transmitters than as independent agents. Third, and perhaps most important, the leaders at the top, who are supposed to control everything and call the shots, end up swamped when the rate of change is high. The new generation of organizations will be much more inspired by the concept of networks than that of hierarchies. They will be flatter, leaner, and more flexible; flatter, more network-like organizations promise to be smarter and more adaptable, faster at turning themselves around than traditional hierarchies. Why? Because information won’t be piped up all the way to the top. In those flatter, more network-like organizations, people won’t be merely information transmitters-they will be empowered assets, acting independently (Rischard).

2.     What is a nation state and how is it being threatened?

The nation-state, which has kept evolving, is a territorial concept defined by a geographical border; inside that physical territory you’ll find a political system, an environmental system, and an economic system. What is happening now is that two big forces will yank the economic system and the environmental system increasingly outside national borders. The new world economy force, for one, is creating an economic system that straddles these borders. Similarly, the demographic force will yank the environmental system increasingly outside the border. As this happens, the political system, delinked from the other two systems, ends up weakened (Rischard).

3.     How is civil society gaining legitimacy over government agencies? Give an example of a NGO (Non-Government Agency) whose goals and services you think are beneficial to solving global problems.

Civil society, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), advocacy groups, unions, religious organizations has become a powerful force. The number of known international NGOs went from 6,000 in 1990 to 26,000 in 2000. Beyond sheer numbers, civil society has also become more powerful through its increasingly deft use of new technologies. Thousands of web sites, instant news services, and alert systems have sprung up and are being used to form powerful coalitions of NGOs and other civil society groups. It is also in part thanks to these new technologies that an ever-growing fringe of civil society has even turned itself into vigorous global protest alliance. A pillar of that alliance has been the electronic network of activists centered around Berkley, Portland, and Seattle, but there are many others, as well as networks of networks. From Seattle to Genoa, these critics have united in large protest coalitions, largely glued together through Internet-based coordination. But the increasing voice and importance of civil society has other causes than sheer numbers, a clever use of technology, and the ability to coalesce into protest alliances, and the public at large sense it. This is why civil society is on its way up in people’s minds: surveys in the United States and Europe show the public at large trusting civil society far more than government, business, or even the media. This builds a raw but genuine form of legitimacy (Rischard).

4.     How can business be a helpful global enforcer?

It is hard to see how the complex problems of the next twenty years can be solved without the active engagement of business. Large corporations have a huge advantage over governments, the advantage of being global. While nation-states struggle to maintain their territorial concept of sovereignty, large multinationals are spreading their operations across many countries. Businesses possess an advantage in knowledge and sheer means. Business will clearly be called on to contribute to their solutions with breakthroughs in renewable energy, desalination, new vaccines and drugs, safer banking, and more sustainable forestry. Big business can even become a helpful global enforcer.  Business, particularly large multinational companies, do a better job than many governments of looking beyond the next few years. Over the last two decades, it has been fascinating to watch quite a few large companies move through four stages of increasing “corporate responsibility.” First, some had small charity departments, creating larger corporate responsibility departments. Next, some became agents of development of their own. Now some are seriously interested in participating with government and civil society in urgent problem-solving, going far beyond their won fields; not for commercial reasons, but because they are beginning to seriously wonder what state the world will be in ten or fifteen years from now. What has happened is that businesses have begun to complement the effort of beleaguered public sectors (Rischard).

5.     What can too much economic and social change lead to?

It can lead to a powerful backlash, brought about by a mixture of rising global inequalities and political instability, demonstrating more vividly that when too many people are left behind by economic change, and governance responses also fall behind, reaction and backlash ensue (Rischard).

6.     What Global Issue concerns you the most? Why?

The drugs that seem to encompass our nations youth, when I was young drugs were everywhere where I lived. I lived in a pretty urban area so I figured that it was somewhat of a cleashay, but when I traveled around and visited family in a more rural area I was shocked to find that they had a drug problem as bad if not worse than the problems that surrounded where I was from.