RE: [Air-l] Re: Company vs. Community
A quick response to the company vs. community question... The question lures us into the temptation of formulating a comprehensive definition of community, which is a fascinating task in itself, and one that I'm going to dodge. It's intriguing to recognize that we're at the point where the question becomes a difficult one. Still, an obvious (?) distinction jumps to mind: A company's goal is quite simply defined: to turn a profit. A community's isn't so simply defined. If a company can meet the goals of profit and efficiency by instilling a "sense of community", then it will likely attempt to do so. If not, then it certainly won't. The fact that a community doesn't have the ability to make the same decision (without losing its status as a community) starts to get at a distinction between the two. The company is a means to an end, but isn't a community, in certain important respects, an end in itself? Consider the example of honor among thieves: isn't the idea here that even when it may be more profitable to do so, the thieves don't turn on each other, that there is some (community?) value that transcends profit? In this sense, a band of "honorable" thieves might be considered to be more of a community than a Wall Street firm. Is it possible to conceive of a company as an end in itself? As background I'm wondering if the well-worn Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft material might be of some use to the student who got this discussion going. It's not the same distinction as community, company, but there might be some useful parallels.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrejevic, Mark" <MAndrejevic@mail.fairfield.edu> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 2:34 PM Subject: RE: [Air-l] Re: Company vs. Community
If a company can meet the goals of profit and efficiency by instilling a "sense of community", then it will likely attempt to do so. If not, then it certainly won't. The fact that a community doesn't have the ability to make the same decision (without losing its status as a community) starts to get at a distinction between the two. The company is a means to an end, but isn't a community, in certain important respects, an end in itself?
I don't think that "profit and efficiency" necessarily preclude community. Certainly, some business types think they are creating "communities of commerce". See Denham Grey's Community Taxonomy at http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?CommunityTaxonomy . The following is from a recent Mckinsey Quarterly e-Newsletter: The case for on-line communities Remember virtual communities--the business model that was supposed to make World Wide Web-based companies profitable? Just another overhyped myth from the days of bubbledom, right? Not so fast: research from McKinsey and Jupiter Media Metrix shows that community features create substantial value for both content and retail sites. http://mckinsey.chtah.com/a/tA8HmvRAG8E6$AHixUQAHwHlw4b/mkq39 There is a recent book by Bressler & Grantham, Sr. (2000) on "Communities of Commerce" (New York: McGraw-Hill). And Etienne Wenger's work on Communities of Practice (1998) takes its examples of COP's almost entirely from business. He and his co-authors have a new book coming out in March: "Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge", Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Alex Kuskis Alex.Kuskis@utoronto.ca
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Andrejevic, Mark