Eduardo Olivia-Lopez -- Egocentric management

ISSS Meeting at Asilomar, June 28-July 2, 1999
  • Special Integration Group on Business and Industry, July 1, 1999, 1:30 p.m. 
These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by Ian Simmonds at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center ( http://www.research.ibm.com ).

Egocentricity in management: 

  • biased understanding of the company's vision, mission, ... 
  • inconsistent and biased scale of values, suited to the manager's current convenience 
  • negligence, exploitation and underrating of human elements ... 
  • biased applicability of the company's resources 
  • ill use of power 
  • misunderstood nature of problems, conciliation ... 
  • ... 
Made a survey of companies (in Mexico).

Egocentric management is associated with ...

Q. Where was survey taken? 

  • A. Survey was in Mexico City 
  • follow-up: the findings are actually repeated in US, Europe, 
  • A. Western Europe has a "superman" problem. 
Enrique: what's happening in Argentina is that there are relatively few Argentine managers -- many other nationalities are represented. Is the French manager the same in France as in Argentina?

Enrique: there are two cases of egocentric: 

  • by nature / character 
  • by situation 
Brian Hilton: talking about the evolution of military culture -- nobody stays in a [particular] position of authority for more than a few years. What it means is that personality can't dominate.

Ian S: The idea of egolessness in practice. In Zen arts (see Eugen Herrigel), in Christopher Alexander, ...
 
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This page was last modified by David Ing on October 11, 1999.