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On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We in an Age of Me Hardcover – January 1, 2004
- Print length284 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFt Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2004
- Dimensions6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100131461257
- ISBN-13978-0131461253
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
--Lincoln Caplan, Editor and President, Legal Affairs magazine
"In the grand tradition of Aristotle's Politics, Alexis deTocqueville's Democracy in America, and Robert Putman's Bowling Alone, Doug Smith's book On Value and Values is a passionately written, ethically informed, and carefully researched social commentary. Like his illustrious predecessors, Smith demands that we think differently about what community means in our own times. Yet unlike most writers concerned with building community, Smith is unburdened by nostalgia or sentimentality--this book looks forward to a challenging tomorrow, not backwards at a lost yesterday. Based on deep thought and on an equally deep practical knowledge of how modern organizations really work, Doug Smith teaches us why we may hope for a bright future and what we need to do in order to get there. I will recommend this book to my students--as I recommend it to everyone seeking to conjoin material success and ethical values in the 21st century."
--Professor Josiah Ober, Department of Classics and Center for Human Values, Princeton University
"Talking heads on both the Right and the Left toss around the word 'community' these days without bothering to explain what they mean. Now Doug Smith has really worked through what respect, trust and open communication within non-hierarchical settings can deliver in terms of productivity, institutional responsiveness, and recovered vitality for the polis. This is a profoundly democratic essay, written with imagination and verve, from someone who clearly cares about good management but who cares even more about the democratic promise."
--Rev. Peter Laarman, Senior Minister, Judson Memorial Church, NewYork City, and founder of The Accountability Campaign Meaning, Not Just Money: Living Better Lives in a Better World
Have we become half human, half dollar?
Our grandparents lived their lives in families, neighborhoods, towns, and nations. We live ours in organizations, markets, networks . .. sharing life with millions of people we know less well, yet depend upon every day. We build value . . . and worry about values.
What is the meaning and direction of our lives in this different world? What do we owe each other now? How do we share responsibility for a future that will not shame our children? Writing with courage, and without illusion, Doug Smith helps us answer questions like these . . .and offers us a clear path forward.
This book is about bringing value and values back together in our organizations, our markets, our networks, our entire lives. It's about reinvigorating old values that can still work for us . . . without imposing ideologies from a mythical past. It's about leading good, honorable, and fulfilling lives where we are now . . . and building a better world out of the one we actually live in.
- Values that work for the 21st century--Personal and organizational ethics for an age of markets in which we act as employees, consumers, investors, and networkers
- Shared values, paths, roles, status, and fates--What we share, what we don't, and what it means to take responsibility for the fate of our planet
- Reintegrating our fragmentary lives--How markets and organizations divide value from values--and how we can put them back together
- Rebuilding democracy: beyond anger, apathy, and proceduralism-- Healing democracy and extending it to where we really live together
Reconnecting money and values . . . in our lives, our work, our world
- Revitalizing old values for the radically different world we actually live in
- How money and ethics were driven so far apart--and what we can do about it
- Living a good life in our organizations, markets, networks, and friends and families
- Beyond individualism only: reinvigorating both the "we" and the "I" in our societies, institutions, and politics
- Taking shared responsibility for making our world safer and saner
Our values and our realities have come apart at the seams. It's time to put them back together. We were taught 19th century values for a life of neighborhoods and extended families, but we're living in 21st century organizations, networks, and global markets in a world that measures everything in money. That's why we struggle to find meaning . . . to live a good life . . . to make our societies work. This book is about revitalizing our values for our world. It's about building good and honorable lives, stronger and more courageous relationships where we are. . . not fantasizing a return to some lost golden age. It's about finding a new vision for ourselves and our institutions, so we can go forward, not back . . . and succeed morally, not just financially.
About the Author
Doug Smith has drawn the lessons for On Value and Values from hiswork across more than 40 industries and professions as a teacher,lawyer, writer, historian, consultant, and thinker. Named in The GuruGuide as one of the worldÕs leading management thinkers, he is author orcoauthor of five books, including Make Success Measurable, TheDiscipline of Teams, Taking Charge of Change, and the internationalbestsellers The Wisdom of Teams and Fumbling the Future: How XeroxInvented Then Ignored Personal Computing. His work has been featured inBusiness Week, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, TheNew York Times, and The McKinsey Quarterly, and has been cited forinnovation and impact by experts ranging from Tom Peters to WarrenBennis. Smith holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.He lives in LaGrangeville, New York
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PREFACE
As this book reaches readers in the spring of 2004, people the worldover, and especially Americans, turn attention to the quadrennialpresidential election in the globe's most powerful and influentialmarket democracy. The twin towers of that democracy--individual politicalliberty and self-interested market economics--took root in 18th and 19thcenturies bearing little resemblance to our 21st century. In 1776, theUnited States formed in revolt against a royal "we" whose oppressions ofindividual liberty and the pursuit of happiness were intolerable. Today,an opposite condition prevails. Hundreds of millions of people in marketdemocracies across the globe are more absorbed with concerns about "me"than any "we," royal or otherwise.
Today, political liberties are consumed in self-interested marketeconomics. This year's presidential contest plays out in markets. Aprofound 18th century innovation--building a nation in which all arecreated equal--is today vulnerable to 21st century market, economic, andtechnological forces that have catapulted concern for value, money, andwinning above concerns for political liberties, social equalities,religious faith, environmental stewardship, technological access,medical fairness, and the rule of law. Those other values have notevaporated or disappeared. They pervade and trouble our lives. But,with the exception of religious faith, they have retreated in the faceof extreme fundamentalism centered on value and individualism.
Beyond friends and family, we have lost a center of gravity joiningvalue with values. If we look hard enough, we see why: the fragmentingof traditional "we's" in which people share fates because of the placesthey live together. The split between value and values is a corollary of"I's" who have spun out of orbit from "we's." Those of us who live inmarkets, networks, nations, and organizations no longer belong toplace-based traditional "we's." Therefore, we must learn to thinkdifferently about "we" in this age of "me" if we are to have any chanceof putting "me" back into "we's" that are real.
This book is a guide for our efforts. Chapters 1 through 3 describethe world in which so many of us live: a world of markets, networks,nations, organizations, friends and family. I call this a world ofpurposes and contrast it to the world of places our parents andgrandparents inhabited. Billions of people on the planet continue tolive--and to share fates--because of places. But not us. What we sharewith others--fates, ideas, roles, relationships--depends more on thepurposes we bring to markets, networks, and organizations than theplaces we reside. Chapters 1 through 3 draw this world of purposes tohelp you figure out how and why purpose and place shape the values youshare with others.
The characteristic ethical challenge in our world of purposes isrejoining value and values. Chapters 1 through 3 recount how concernsfor value (money and wealth) have split off and subordinated concernsfor other values. Strongly shared and predictable beliefs andbehaviors--shared values of all sorts--arise among people who sharerelationships, roles, status, ideas, and, especially, fates. In a worldof places, these sources of shared values reinforced one another toproduce highly predictable beliefs and behaviors that were sometimesexcellent, sometimes atrocious, sometimes indifferent. Our new world ofmarkets, networks, nations, organizations, friends and families hastransformed the operation and effects of the sources of shared values.Our shared relationships differ, our shared roles differ, our sharedideas differ. We share fates with other people in friends, family, andorganizations, not places. Chapters 4 through 9 describe how humanity'ssources of shared values--relationships, roles, ideas, fates--have morphedin markets, networks, and organizations to foster powerful forces withwhich we must contend if we are to build shared values.
Chapters 10 through 15 recount our contemporary experience of thetwin towers of market democracies--political liberty and self-interestedeconomics--as well as a series of corollary values. What we believe andhow we behave with regard to liberty and civil society (Chapter 10),community (Chapter 11), democracy (Chapter 12), problem solving andgovernance (Chapter 13), the common good and the greatest good (Chapter14), and capitalism and caring (Chapter 15) play out in markets,networks, nations, and organizations, and among friends and families,instead of places. We encounter our most fertile experiences of suchvalues in organizations that, in turn, have become the most crucial andreal "we" beyond friends and family. Chapters 10 through 15 help us seethat, by using organizations to think differently about "we," all of uscan act to restore value to the house of values in our world ofpurposes.
Chapter 16 lays out a five-part strategy for blending value andvalues in how we live our lives. It delineates a framework for ethicalaction through which we can reconnect making a good living to leading agood life. Chapter 17 describes a number of specific suggestions fortaking action within the ethical framework of Chapter 16.
That we must find the courage to act is, I think, what ThomasJefferson would have called self-evident and Adam Smith prudent. Thetwin towers of 21st century market democracies rise from the worksauthored by these two men in 1776. That year The Declaration ofIndependence and The Wealth of Nations launched humanity on a journeytoward "I's" and "we's" who could fulfill the best in our natures. Thatpath is now gravely threatened. An extreme individualism equatinghappiness with value alone now trumps choices and policies made inmarkets of all kinds, political and otherwise. "We" are in retreatbecause so many place-based "we's" in which we once experienced sharedfates have become the imaginary "we's" of small towns, neighborhoods,and communities in which we don't. Value and "I" can never migrate backinto a sustainable blend with values and "we" unless "we's" are realinstead of imagined. Those of us who live in a world of purposes mustthink differently about the real "we's" of our lives--especially ourorganizations--and purposefully blend value and values in those "we's" inways that will not shame or condemn our children.
Jefferson and Smith, along with so many others, left us a legacy ofcelebrated, excellent values. We must act to preserve and extend thosevalues. The twin towers of political liberty and self-interested marketeconomics are our responsibility. Oddly, though certainly, our legacydepends on rediscovering how "we's"--real "we's"--give life to the freedomand happiness of "I's" if we are to save the "I" from self-destruction.We must work together, learn together and pray together in real "we's"so that peace and prosperity spread to all the world, and our childreninherit a bountiful and good future to pass on to their children. Wemust act. But, first we must see who and when we are a real we capableof shared purpose and shared action because the twin towers of freedomand happiness--and the fate of the planet--now belong to us.
Product details
- Publisher : Ft Pr (January 1, 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 284 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0131461257
- ISBN-13 : 978-0131461253
- Item Weight : 1.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,150,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,906 in Epistemology Philosophy
- Customer Reviews:
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Smith clearly states the problem: value has come to trump values. Our challenge is, how do we integrate value and values?
Many, many people have laid out the challenges with market fundamentalism and the focus on short-term shareholder value. What most fail to do is articulate a convincing alternative vision and discuss how to make this possible.
Smith talks about how people can do this in their organizations. He talks about how to articulate clear, compelling “should be” values in organizations.And he offers many practical steps anyone can take within their organizations and networks.
This is a must read for anyone interested in economics.
This book is the wisest, most real and pragmatic description of values - including what's at stake and what you can do about it - that exists in print or any other medium. No wonder others who have read it compare the book to DeTocqueville's "Democracy in America," Aristotle's "Politics," Persig's "Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" - and, in the case of several readers, the Bible.
Why? Well, perhaps foremost because Smith looks at the subject of values differently. Instead of repeating the all-too-typical `finger pointing' discussion of "you have bad values/I have good values", Smith takes a big step back and demands perspective. This book treats readers like adults not children. Smith asks you to look at what makes beliefs and behaviors - values of all kinds - predictable instead of random on the premise that if you hold a certain set of values as `good', you'd prefer them to be predictably acted upon by others in addition to yourself.
And, he asks that question in the context of the real world you actually live in - a world of markets, networks, organizations, friends and family - instead of an illusory world of neighborhoods and towns that exists more in the movies than everyday life as we live it. He asks you to reflect on your values as consumer, employee and investor - the real roles you play out in your life along with friend and family - instead of neighbor and citizen (still powerful ideas, but hardly ever actual day-to-day roles).
We can not expect predictable and shared values, Smith notes, unless we first understand when we are a `we' in this new world of markets, networks, organizations, friends and family. Hence the subtitle: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me.
From the first sentence, Smith points straight to the hallmark problem of our new age of humankind: the war between our legitimate concern for value (profits, wealth, winning) and our legitimate concern for values (social, political, environmental, spiritual, family, medical, legal and so forth). He asks readers to listen to a cultural drumbeat that has excommunicated the singular - value - from the plural values.
If we are to hand over a sustainable, just and prosperous world to our children and grandchildren, we must restore our pursuit of value to the house of all values - and we must do this our real world of markets, networks, organizations, friends and family instead of the illusory world of feel good movies, TV and political campaigns.
Democracy. Community. Liberty. Civil Society. Self-government. The Common Good. The Greater Good. Capital. Caring. These and other values hang in the balance as hundreds of millions of us transition from place-based human connectedness to purpose-based linkages in markets, networks and organizations. Neither you nor anyone you know can make choices about adhering to and promoting values you hold dear unless you first understand the real world in which you live and how to work as employees, consumers and investors - both individually and in real `we's' -- to make the world one you'll be proud to hand down to future generations.
Like many, I've often asked and heard others ask, "What can I do to make a difference?" On "Value and Values" provides a powerful and profound primer filled with answers to this all-important question.
The arresting image of "the twin towers of market democracies-political liberty and self-interested economics" introduces Doug Smith's thesis that we today suffer from an extremism that has apotheosized economic value and self-gratification, and which imperils our ability to bring to fruition the "best in our natures." The importance of On Value and Values is that it diagnoses our situation, grounds it in a reality that is true for millions of us, and proposes solutions that in part draw on Smith's exceptional organizational and management expertise. This is important because central to Smith's viewpoint is the idea that organizations have supplanted the "world of places" as the venues where people actually are bound together by shared values and fates. And it is thus through organizations that individuals acting together can bring about the change that will reunite value and values.





