Corporates & Governments?
ok... i wanna start of with a sad truth.. ive wanted to write a funny, easy going blog for sometime, but nothin seems to be popping up in my head. Maybe this worklife has destroyed my sense of humor or maybe i am living a very sad life here... anyways i leave the judgement to u.. and move on to better things....
A recent training at my company made me aware of how huge an organization i am working for and how insignificant I am in the scheme of things. However it also showed me that even if i was insignificant, there were processes and systems built to ensure that even the smallest guy worked his backside off for the betterment of the company.
As one of the speakers was explaining the structure of my company, starting from my level to the myriads of interdependencies and finally ending at the CEO, i was wonderstruck at the size of the organization and wondered who the CEO reported to.. well.. no prizes for guessing, the CEO reports to the shareholders....
Who are the shareholders? People like u and me, employees, pensioners, family men who would be earning a fraction of what the CEO would be earning, but who have the power to question the CEO and his policies every quarter. The CEO must ensure that he maximizes the ROI for these shareholders so as to keep his job :)
In many ways isnt this similair to the structure of a government as well? Think of an imaginary world where every shareholder is allowed to hold only 1 share, and the price of the share is not that significant. In that situation, each share is almost similair to a vote and the quarterly or yearly shareholder meetings are similair to elections...
Following a similair logic, does that mean that therefore corporations can run countries better than governments themselves? In the case of India at least, its quite well accepted that the corporations are far more efficient than the govt, unlike China where the govt is far more efficient than the corporations.
Even the Govt of Singapore runs itself like a corporation, every department is responsible for its ROI. And ROI is measured to even the smallest of items, recently i read that the ROI on some bus stops were dropping and hence the govt was planning to change the advertising rates for them!
Does that mean that the present govt must step down and ask someone like the Tatas or Infosys to take up the job? Well, the concept is possible, however there are some issues with such a scenario:
Firstly an ROI model need not work in allsituations for a Government. An example of taking it a bit too far was when i came to know that some of the colleges in Singapore have classrooms where there are 500 students attending and 1 teacher teaching.. Some smart alec in the govt would have calculated the cost of hiring an extra teacher and come with the recommendation that this is the most profitable way to run the business.. Somehow they lost the common sense factor that so many students in a single class is useless....
Secondly money is not the only criteria to measure the success of a Government, there is a fine line between an expense and an investment when you are running a country. There are issues of individual freedom and accountability.
Anyways too many thoughts for a sleepy Sunday afternoon, however i guess I can conclude that Governments, especially the Indian one has a lot to learn from these corporations on how to run its business of keeping people happy
posted by Padakkam @ 2:17 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
The one key reason why I feel the analogy of governments as corporations would not work is that the government is responsible for all members under its wing, irrespective of their productivity. While corporations can fire employees who do not contribute to the bottomline, governments have account for the destitutes on the streets, criminals in prisons, the disabled, etc. Moreover, corporations are, by nature, not known to be democratic. In spite of all the talk of a horizontal hierarchy, there's a clear top-down approach, which is a problem when translated to governments; if anything, people want to aspire towards a grassroots-to-top approach to governance, better implemented as a democracy.
hmmm... interesting thoughts... However, you are not the first to think that running a government as a business can make some kind of sense (which is why governments do privatisation and contract out public activities). Danish government could be more efficient as well, however, the flip side of letting the market take over public activties is that social standarts may be compromised. Meaning that the risk of falling through the social safety net increases. According to my world view this is what I'll get in return for less bureacracy and increased government efficiency, and why would I want that...????
A very well written post indeed. But there is no corporate way and a govtmental way of doing things. There is and there shud only be a Right way and a Wrong way. Once the system gets corporatised the worht of democracy goes to drains. And certainly thats not how it shud be!
Sherin
Sunday afternoon ill vere pani onnumillengil, food adichu kidannu orangan nokku... ivan verum puli alla keto, kazhutha puli aanu!!!
ithu valiya thondaravu aayallo
by george! behind that stupid exterior u actually think! amazing! who wouldve thought.:) was just taking a 'break' from working my ass off. btw, why is there an under tone of sadness?! going for the brooding guy image?
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