We've accepted a view that today's corporate social order embodies male interests and values--when it's often profoundly testosterone-hostile.
A significant degree of poetic license has been employed in the contemporary linking of male values to those of business. Only part of this association-building effort has been the work of politicians. In works of pop sociology and "corporate how to" over the past two or three decades, a number of writers have put forward the notion that the contemporary work group is the direct psychic descendant of the archetypal male hunting band.
This lends an appealing dash of drama to groups whose tasks are more likely to be, say, increasing consumption of a particular brand of disposable diapers in the North Central region, or finding a way to reduce the cost of ingredients in floor wax. By so doing, it renders passionate immersion in such tasks, and a concomitant willingness to stake our personal prestige and even self-worth on their accomplishment, a bit more explicable.
But how valid is this association? If the contemporary workplace can be said to correspond to some traditional and deeply-ingrained human social organizing principle, is its closest correspondence really to the hunting band? Before answering this question, we would do well to take a closer look at the hunting band, along with at least one other major historical form of social organization.
(c) COPYRIGHT 1998 ROBERT WINTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
