Riding the waves of culture Hoofdstuk 10 – 11
How We Relate to Nature
Survival itself has meant acting against and with the environment in ways to render it both less
threatening and more sustaining.
Peoples economic development can be viewed as a gradual strengthening of their devices to keep
nature at bay. In the course of human existence there has been a shift from a preponderant fear that
nature would overwhelm human existence to the opposite fear that human existence may
overwhelm and degrade nature, so that, for example, a genetic storehouse of incredible richness in
the Amazon rain forest may be bulldozed to oblivion before we have even discovered it.
Controlling Mature or Letting It Take Its Course
Societies that conduct business have developed two major orientations toward nature. They either
believe that they can and should control nature by imposing their will on it, as in the ancient biblical
injunction “Multiply and subdue the earth” or they believe that humans of nature and must go along
with its laws, directions, and forces. to be described as inner – directed
The second, the outer-directed, tends to see an organization as itself a product of nature, owing its
development to the nutrients in its environment and to a favourable ecological balance.
American psychologist J- B. Rotter: developed a scale designed to measure whether people had an
internal locus of control, typical of more successful Americans, or an external locus of control, typical
of relatively less successful Amer; Jeans, disadvantaged by their circumstances or shaped by the
competitive efforts of their rivals.
Control and Success
Virtue was to achieve harmonia, harmony among the natural forces acting through you. Success is
identified with control over outside circumstances. However, internal versus external loci of control
do not necessarily distinguish the successful from the less successful in non-American cultures. There
are ways of adapting to external influences that can prove economically effective. this can be
more advantageous dan opposing your own preferences.
The obvious advantages may not be obvious to all. For example; Outer directed need not mean God-
directed or fate-directed; it may mean directed by the knowledge revolution or by the looming
pollution crisis, or by a joint-venture partner.
In the original American concept of internal and external sources of control, the implication is that
the outer-directed person is offering an excuse for failure rather than a new wisdom. In other nations
it is not seen as personal weakness to acknowledge the strength of external forces or the
arbitrariness of events.
Outer-directed behavior the reference point lies outside of people. Outer-directedness does not
preclude rivalry or competition but rather can help to give it form and style.
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, Inner-Directed Mechanism: The Renaissance Ideal
Discover the laws of this universe, laws of time and motion, was to worship its creator. To
understand the laws of the mechanism, it was necessary to predict and control the operation of
nature’s machinery. According to Jacques Ellul, the earlier belief in magic was now replaced by
technique, applied not simply to external nature but also to a person’s head and body. “Technique,”
writes Ellul, “is the translation into action of man’s concern to master things by means of reason, to
account for what is subconscious, make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and precise the
outlines of nature, take hold of chaos, order it”.
The Modern View of Nature: The Cybernetic Cosmology
While for the Greeks nature was a living organism and for the Renaissance it was a machine
potentially controllable by human reason in modern system dynamics or cybernetics both these
views are transcended into a more inclusive concept of a living system that both nurtures the
individual and can be developed by individuals dependent on that system.
There is a shift from trying to seize control over nature to identifying with its ecological self-
regulation and natural balance. The manager intervenes but is not the cause of what occurs; the
systems of organizations and markets have their own momentum, which we can influence but not
drive.
How Important Is a Culture’s Orientation to nature?
Cultures may seek either to master nature, to accept and be subjugated by it, or to live in the most
effective harmony with it. Nature is both controllable by people and liable to show sudden reversals
of relative strength, becoming their master, not slave. Neither situation is very stable nor very
desirable.
A product may succeed not because we will it to, or because the special features designed into it
delight customers. It may succeed for reasons other than those that come from inside of us, reasons
that have to do with the way other people in the environment think rather than we ourselves.
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