Re: OT: Atheist joke


John Larkin wrote:
On 27 Mar 2006 01:00:11 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Larkin wrote:
On 26 Mar 2006 09:55:28 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


Both the Co-op stores and the John Lew Partnership have survived
through rather turbulent times. They aren't exactly convincing examples
of metastability.

They aren't convincing examples of co-ops either. They are classic
business structures, run by megabuck CEOs, boards of directors,
accountants and attorneys. And their employees are just employees.

They don't fit your U.S.-media-condtitioned image of what constitutes a
co-op,

You always resort to insults.

That isn't an insult. You live in the U.S. and most of the information
you are going to get about co-ops is filtered through the U.S. media.
which isn't exactly sympathetic to what they see as left-wing social
experiments.

I've always be interested in the motivations of those rare individuals like you who have
an active need to be uncivil and disliked. There's a lot to be learned there.

I don't perceive an active need on my part to be either uncivil or
disliked. I do feel motivated to make my opinions clear and
unambiguous.

any more than the Dickensian images of western buinesses
practices presented by communist Russian media conformed to western
reality.

And you learned of this... how? When I was in the USSR, the only
attitude I could see that they had for US business was awe and envy.
They all wished *they* could work for a Capitalist enterprise.

The East European film industry and the Russian novels pulbished in
translation via the regular routes (rather than the stuff that got
smuggled out) did have to hew closer to the party line. Obviously,
individual Russians didn't believe the propaganda, and developed an
equally unrealistic idea of the efficiency and effetiveness of western
business practices, that served them poorly when the communist regime
finally did come apart.

I might point out that my opinions of "serious" co-op businesses was also
acquired first-hand, and often eaten on the spot.

Where? The Russian business was never run on co-op lines - the party
machine dominated the whole system, and I've enver heard of a really
large-scale U.S. co-op.

And the net profit made by the John Lewis partnership is distributed to
the employees - from the John Lewis web-site "Every March, all the
profit we have made in the previous trading year

(over and above the
funds we need to keep to develop our business)

That last part is really funny. I assume that includes the 1.3 million
pounds the CEO pulls down, and a few other details.

I'm sure that it does. That seems to be the going price for managerial
talent - a grossly exaggerated price, but many other orgainsiations
seem to find it worth their while to pay that sort of money to their
top executives.

is distributed to
Partners as a percentage of salary. In recent years the bonus has
ranged from 8% to 22%." Effectively, the employees are the
shareholders.

The Co-op Group is a much more complicated entity, and some of their
employees probably are "just employees" - it is the customers who are
the share-olders ...

The issue to me is not a definition - definitions are not worth
arguing over - but the relationship between quality and productivity
as functions of the heirarchial-to-egeletarian management of an
enterprise. Since I own such an enterprise, with 22 employees, and my
first goal is to design as much and as mind-bogglingly great
electronics as we possibly can, the issue is far from abstract to me.
Of course, your situation is precisely opposite in all respects.

With 22 employees, you aren't managing an organisation but a team. I've
worked for one company - Chessell Recorders - who were part of the
Eurotherm Group whose policy was to keep every company in the group
smaller than about 250 people, so that each company could get by
without a personnel department and that kind of impersonal
administration. Racal was supposed to work the same way. I could see
the advantages, but got out after five months when one of the
disadvantages provoked four of us to resign in the same week (which won
us an interview with the Eurotherm Group chairman and founder, much
good that that did anybody).

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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