How America's Corporate Culture is Destroying People's Souls

What follows will be a series of articles on the problems with America's corporate culture. While I will do my normal self-promotion in order to get more readers to it, I strongly encourage or would if the Associated Content rules would permit me other to submit it to the appropriate social book marking sites. I am far from the only person speaking out against it, but somehow the message is not getting through to the people who most need to hear it.

I was going to begin this article by criticizing Stephen R. Covey, but there are two problems with that. I have not actually read his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and secondly, the corporate trends that so easily allowed him to bring Mormon spirituality in the boardroom were in place long before he wrote his book.

Mormons may not like me comparing their church to a corporation or to say that the trends that made Covey so successful in the business world are evil, but while evil may be too strong a word it is an apt one. Corporations have long put in the appearance of caring about their employees by introducing words like "human resources." However, what did the human resources department replace? Personnel. At least with personnel you could not look at the word and forget you were dealing with people. Human resources appear to be an ambiguous term used by corporations today. In some cases, they may even go so far as to suggest they value their employees as resources. However, the term resource carries the connotation with it that people are there to be used up. Once they no longer have any convenience to the corporation, they are to be thrown away or discarded and left to fend for themselves.

Many older working poor are now suffering from this kind of attitude. In the past, American companies used to be loyal to their employees as long as their employees showed loyalty to them, but now company loyalty is a one-way street. In fact, some businesses will go so far as to make skilled professionals sign contracts which say that the professional will not work for one of their competitors for as much as five years. It seems that corporations who do this want to control the resource even after it's no longer of use to them and may severely hurt the professional's ability to find another job in the same field.

Much like the feudal system, corporations are not open to criticism coming from below. It is up to the employees and the managers to implement the policies appropriately and while it is a good thing those policies are designed to make the company money, often they have no understanding of their customers. Business stores in rural areas offering long distance plans and forcing their employees to sell them is a good example, not that I will name the company (Staples) I know that did it.

Unfortunately, American corporations whether they realize it or not are trying to crush their employees under a soul-crushing grayness. Individuality is not encouraged and in order to get ahead you not only have to dress like the people above you, you have to think like them as well. Criticism even if it is offered constructively is often not encouraged.

I am not the first to rail out against this, but apparently Antz was viewed as too much of a children's film for corporate executives and other people responsible for bringing the people under the soul-crushing oppression of corporate cultures to watch it. Terry Pratchett addressed many of the same issues in his book Going Postal.

Unless people have the courage to speak out against the trend and correct it where it is wrong it will become irreversible. If you read this and think "oh, I have a human resources department in my business and am doing all the things the human relations gurus tell me to do back up a second. If you have gotten this far and do not yet realize that you are part of the problem, there is nothing I can do for you.

Both factory workers and those in the office realize there is something wrong. It's not just that they come home tired at the end of each day. If the person has worked hard that is as it should be. It is that the work environment is designed in such a way that it sucks creativity from the individual and additions like the performance review, which as I will show have their roots in Mormon spirituality later in this series. Sadly, performance reviews are just to remind you are not perfect, not really to help you improve. Eternal progression has its place in Mormon thought, but managers are often left having to find things to complain about even in their best employees.