So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option. Uh, no. Monogamy is rooted in, basically, the following issues: 1) Germ control. You can get deadly diseases by sleeping around casually. 2) Sex leads to babies and human babies do best with two parents. It is a big burden and our species is de…
You're trying to justify the dominant social mode rather than trying to discover arrangements that make people fulfilled.
Marriage stats suggest that humans aren't at all monogamous, most marriages end in divorce, and most people cheat.
The view of romantic relationships underlying this piece is not one shared by most of my friends who are in stable relationships, and is IMHO rather unhealthy. People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped". They stay because their partner is who they are looking for, someone who enriches their life. Healthy people sting for a bit when dumped, but they get over it and find someon…
Company/employee relations are well-modeled by marriage between a mortal human and an immortal sociopath.
The Ancient Greeks had a fairly extensive literature on such relationships, which tended not to end well for the human, even when the human is exceptional. The gods... err... corporations can always behave irrationally, so even "irreplaceable" people can get dumped.
So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option. Uh, no. Monogamy is rooted in, basically, the following issues: 1) Germ control. You can get deadly diseases by sleeping around casually. 2) Sex leads to babies and human babies do best with two parents. It is a big burden and our species is de…
You're trying to justify the dominant social mode rather than trying to discover arrangements that make people fulfilled. Marriage stats suggest that humans aren't at all monogamous, most marriages end in divorce, and most people cheat.
The view of romantic relationships underlying this piece is not one shared by most of my friends who are in stable relationships, and is IMHO rather unhealthy. People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped". They stay because their partner is who they are looking for, someone who enriches their life. Healthy people sting for a bit when dumped, but they get over it and find someon…
To add to that, I know of at least two instances of people in stable relationships with children who are not formally married (there's nothing really special about having a child with someone without being married legally speaking - the father signs a document stating that he's the father and is treated as such from then on; the mother is obviously known). That's really the kind of relationship I'd like to be in - one where you don't involve the state's laws in your close personal affairs. You can still have a ceremony and exchange rings, and the people I know do wear engagement rings.
So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option. Uh, no. Monogamy is rooted in, basically, the following issues: 1) Germ control. You can get deadly diseases by sleeping around casually. 2) Sex leads to babies and human babies do best with two parents. It is a big burden and our species is de…
You're trying to justify the dominant social mode rather than trying to discover arrangements that make people fulfilled. Marriage stats suggest that humans aren't at all monogamous, most marriages end in divorce, and most people cheat.
The view of romantic relationships underlying this piece is not one shared by most of my friends who are in stable relationships, and is IMHO rather unhealthy. People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped". They stay because their partner is who they are looking for, someone who enriches their life. Healthy people sting for a bit when dumped, but they get over it and find someon…
You have extremely good points about my article. My thoughts on your points: 1) The article was specifically written by me (CEO of my small business) for my top managers, so while a big Fortune 500 company will never act this way - I can make sure my company does treat the employee in this fashion. 2) Companies absolutely should respond to changing market conditions and often this will mean that certain roles go away while new ones emerge. However, as CEO of my company I can make decisions that are not optimized for profit such as to keep a great employee and retrain them into a new position or at least to continue paying them till they find a similar position. 3) True - If I did this for ALL positions the company would fail to keep up with the market. However, if the company does this with the top 5% of people, those people will likely perform even in different roles as market needs evolve.
This article is terrible. >Some companies today and many companies of yesteryear had a different relationship with their team members: that of the husband / wife level of commitment. The relationship was more like parent & child than that of husband & wife. That's what it was with the 1950s automotive companies and Japanese corporations decades ago. The common adjective when discussing those companies was "paternalis…
Very good point about the parent-child relationship vs the spousal relationship... I thought of the husband-wife metaphor today and liked it so I wrote an article on it. I will consider your idea further to see if my idea needs updating.
This article is terrible. Companies are not loyal to their employees and pretending otherwise is truly deluding yourselves. People in a marriage, in theory, should remain loyal for life.
I agree most companies are not loyal. It would need to be a 2 way relationship led by ownership (not really possible for publicly held companies, but can work for small wholly owned companies like mine). Perhaps it should even include some sort of legal contract...