Creation & Corporations

A mention of Genesian belief in Ackoff, R. L. The Democratic Corporation, OUP NY 1994:

"Most people in the West also believed the claim made in Genesis that people had been created in the im age of God. (This claim was not surprising, considering its source.)" p. 6.

He refers here to the pre-nineteenth century modern period.

In a number of pieces written by Ackoff, I've come across his references to Genesis. He makes other biblical and/or religious references too. One of the best in this book is on page 10:

"Nineteen hundred years earlier, a Western God disappeared and became an abstract spirit with whom ordinary men could not communicate directly. An institution and a profession -- the church and the clergy -- were created to bridge the gap. Similarly as the 19th century drew to a close, management (the church) and managers (the clergy) were created to control enterprises in the alleged interest of their owners and to discern and communicate their will to the employees. Managers came to know the shareholders' will in the same way the clergy claimed to know the will of God, by revelation."

While Ackoff has some things wrong, in my view, as an outsider (I surmise) of the church his observations are interesting. He touches on one of the predominant heresies in the Anglican church which we've not discussed here, but perhaps that's for another day.

I think his reference to Genesis, while brief, suggests that he observes that its direct meaning is taken by its believers and not as meaning something completely else because he implies evolutionary ideas further on in this chapter. He uses these to illustrate a particular conceptual model of organisations that differs from the model he attributes to a mechanical view of the cosmos deriving from Newton. All a bit 'potted' but as an indicator of what 'outsiders' understand in Christian history and thought, just a tad fascinating.

Unsurprisingly, people like Ackoff never jump from Genesian creation to purposeless evolution as being compatible bedfellows: only (some) Sydney Anglicans (Jensenites) seem to manage that trick.