While values and their priorities have been the content of the axiological attractor described, the influential component carved out in this section deals with normative evaluations meant to allow for decisions regarding human interaction (especially under the consideration of dilemmas). The central question: How to relate one’s practice to the rest of the world? And namely: How to behave with regards to other humans and human institutions and how to behave towards the natural environment? Considerations about sustainability are hereby included following the logic of the necessity of a functioning (resource) environment for future generations [i]. This attractor therefore deals with Habermas’ condition of whether the already discussed attractors on finality and practice are normatively right in an alignment with what one normatively should do. It is important to point out that this learning stage ‘is not something added, rather it represents a fundamental reorganization of the system’ (Macy, 1991, p. 126). What Macy wants to highlight is that being in harmony with the world is a step that is required and that might cause the whole vision to change. This is so because it allows for the individual to identify and evaluate opportunities, because an opportunity only exists when it is attractive to others, and it can constrain or even eliminate an opportunity if the consequences for others has by its nature negative results.

While there are several concepts of departure in making considerations about ethics and sustainability (as alluded to when elaborating on axiologies), Kant’s categorical imperative is the cornerstone of his moral philosophy as well as the basis for deontological ethics which are most commonly used for scrutinizing ethical validity. It famously reads: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant, 1948).

The ethics attractor was the most difficult to investigate for the universities, because it is not directly codified nor made explicit in the interview. In fact, this is, following the cybernetician Heinz von Foerster, a normal state. He proclaimed that ethics need to be implicit (Foerster, 1994, 1999).

Responsibility of Modern Philosophy and Procrustes
Another weighty argument for the inclusion of the ethics and sustainability attractor is Auschwitz. It is the argument of the Frankfurt school and others (Welsch, 1998), that, even though philosophy has not directly caused the barbarism of the second World War, and especially the holocaust, it has not prevented it. Some philosophers were even used to argue for its legitimacy. The claim is that no philosophy after Auschwitz can neglect the indirect responsibility or at least weakness that it did not give the mindset to the people to resist and prevent the atrocities (ibid). It is in this sense, a model which considers ethics and sustainability as the discipline that sets out to demands ethical practices and long-term preservation of resources. Each individual is responsible for his being. Each philosophy is responsible for the consequences of its application.

Over thousands of years humans have learned to tame – as in dominate –our external nature. With the raise of modernity the inner nature of the human being is more and more tamed, or dominated by systemic instrumentalization. Through homogenization, through uniformization, and standardization, individuals are made into numbers, incidents of statistics and instruments. We become social automats, a cybernetic system housed in an organic shell. Horkheimer and Adorno write in “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” (Horkheimer, Adorno, & Schmid Noerr, 2002), that the success factor of (modern) reason is to make “the unity of the manipulated multitude [- manipulated through the authoritarian power structures - ] consists in the negation of each individual and is scorn on the kind of society which was capable of facilitating his individuality” (as cited in Welsch 1998, p. 15). Put differently, the dehumanization of work in the industrialized production of the conveyor belt has caused an external locus of control. The modern knowledge worker on the other hand needs to be an individual again and by achieving an inner locus of control regains agency and sovereignty.

“The horde is not a relapse into the old barbarism, but the triumph of repressive egalitarianism.” (ibid p. 355). In „Negative Dialectics“ (Adorno, 1973) this claim is applied to the concentration camps. The people who died in the camps died as specimens; therefore all others who escaped the measure suffered meta-physically the same fate.

The omnipresent paradigm of standardisation and quantification bears parallels with the practice of Procrustes, the disreputable host of Greek mythology. Procrustes happily received all visitors and offered them a bed to rest. However, being a perfectionist, he wanted to ensure that the visitor fitted the bed just right. Rather than adjusting the bed to the human, he amputated lapping limps, or stretched the guest on a rack until he would fit the bed. The total levelling of uniqueness (Gleichmacherei) is impeding entrepreneurship in this sense. On the societal level, the logic of normalisation which allowed for economies of scale and automation, developed into a systemic logic interested in maintaining the status quo; on the individual level, this system caused a feeling of impotence towards the enormous organisations. The logic of pessimism plays out in ‘normal vocational/life trajectories’ resulting in limited sanctioned opportunity sets of career paths (positively discriminated by the system).

Case Analysis
One definitive instance of a missed attempt to create a just environment was reported. In the early bootstrapping phase of the UOC, many practices were not regulated and some professors created personal web pages about their work and professional interests. After some time the institutional environment became more closely defined and one informant reported that he was approached by the technical managers and asked to close his page as other professors would feel inferior for not having the skills and passion to setup a personal page (UOC faculty 13). Even today the UOC does not provide personal pages for their faculty. This form for egalitarianism creates a neophobe [ii], an atrophied organisation that does not allow new features and practices to emerge because they would create an un-equal condition.

Even though the attractors comprising the entrepreneurial mindset are simultaneously at work, there is a certain logic as to how one depends on the other, on which order the narrative is based. The last step in closing the dependence circle happens when the entrepreneur defines himself in relation to the other, considered in this case as an ethical attractor. He is now ready to enter in systemic differentiation.

-------------------------------

[i] To some degree the ethics and sustainability attractor overlaps with the telos of justice; in comparison to the function as telos, here it is conceptualized as necessary condition for rational entrepreneurial practice and as trigger for reflexivity.

[ii] Neophobia is the fear of new things and experiences.

Users' Comments (0)

Add your comment