The Role of the Individual in Corporate North America

November 5th. 2002

Responsibility is a topic that is subject to various levels of interpretation. We evolve into the adult world taking it on layer by layer. We teach our children to be responsible by encouraging them to take charge of their lives year by year.

There is a certain authority that is associated with being responsible. A CEO or Director of a company, for example, usually has the right to hire and fire employees while being held responsible for running the organization. For assuming this responsibility, corporate leaders are compensated financially and (in most cases) rewarded for performance - judged according to financial, measurable, quantitative means. Any good leader will admit, however, that the overall performance of an organization is the result of the collective input of all the raw materials and the labour from the members of this organization. The overall performance of each employee/business decision is reflected in the bottom line. Most successful companies realize that superior performance from the collective effort of its members occurs in win-win situations, where employees are happy, respected and compensated fairly for their valued contribution.

According to Merriam-Webster, being responsible means that one is liable to be called upon to answer for one’s acts or decisions. In the example above, employees are accountable to their leader, who is then judged according to the level of financial success that this collective group has been able to achieve. Although it is easier to make a direct connection between the cause and effect of each of our decision making processes within our own micro-worlds, we often fail to see the connection between our actions and their effects on a larger scale. Our frequent inability to see this connection is blocked by barriers of ignorance, geography, culture, diplomacy and politics - the shield of these material and intangible walls obscures the cause and effect relationship of our behaviour.

Our individual responsibilities to the global community become more and more obscure, yet our individual contributions display themselves for the observant, as pieces of garbage make their way to enormous landfills.

Around the globe we are seeing more and more discontent and concern for the effects of government and corporations on an international level, as evidenced by the level of protest witnessed around the globe at world trade events. However, what we need to remember is that government and corporations are made up of individuals. In government in the Western world we are able to vote for leaders of our own choosing or even have the option of running for office if we feel strongly enough.

And as for corporations, collectively we enable them to be powerful by purchasing their products or investing in them by owning stock (or investing in an investment fund that owns shares). Collectively we validate the underlying value system that a particular corporation represents through our financial support of whatever it is that they are providing us. If there weren’t a demand, there would be a cease in supply because it wouldn’t be financially viable for the corporation to continue offering its product or service. The corporation would either go bankrupt or it would have to change its product or service offering in order to remain profitable. In corporate North America, the individual has a choice to purchase or not, to invest or not. Corporations and governments mirror what we find acceptable - if we don’t like what we see in the mirror we should change our individual behaviour to reflect a change in the underlying value system.

Written By Connie Linder
Founder/President: Insight Creative Communications
connie@insightcreativecommunications.com