Anything the world has got an impersonal and personal comonent and they cannot be separated. Lets take Government. On one way, any Government is headed by a leader : a person or a group of persons (with name and individuality) but when the Government acts, its impersonal.
President of a Country is a person – an individual but when his will acts through different departments or ministeries, it is impersonal.
If we expand this metaphor of government to the whole cosmic manifestation, we find impersonalism first ( the Nature is working like an automatic machine) but it does not satisfy us fully. We enquire : Whose Nature ? Who is controlling this machine ?
Now coming back to organizations – business organizations to be specific : find the same impersonalism and personalism issue.
There is a limit or balance between this impersonal and personal component and our ‘sense of comfort’. Large Corporations are mostly impersonal. They are so large, vast and interwined that for all practical purposes, we are dealing with its impersonalism aspect and personal controllers are very very far away or hidden. Once this comes to a critical level, chaos starts building in the conceptual framework.
Credit Crisis : Suppose a small bank in your street has defrauded its clients. Immedeiately, the person / persons are known or can be identified. In theory at least. Now the credit crisis has demonstrated how impersonalism can give rise to a situation where there is no conceivable way to bring accountability without blasting off the whole framework. Too big to fail in this context is = too big or nothing
There is a point after which we cannot handle impersonalism meaningfully. Our consciouness is designed that way.
The whole idea and activity of celebrity mania / idol worship / divine status of some people in media, sports, entertainment tell how a considerable proportion of humanity cannot remain in impersonal glory.
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