8.

The Human Stain

YOU WILL ALMOST NEVER see the following question raised explicitly, but it rumbles beneath most debates between strategy and its critics: What is the best way to define the consciousness of a company? To capture it as a purposeful entity? Corporations aren’t conscious beings, of course, but are legal constructs that are also agglomerations of individuals, each with his or her own mind, bound together by agreement, law, and custom. But if it were in your interest, perhaps because you were running one, to get your mind around the company as something akin to a person, self-aware, with aspirations and fears, capable of conceiving action and taking it, what would be the most useful framework, model, or construct to adopt?

Businesspeople ...

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