The Organizational Spirit Lacking in Today’s Financial Crisis
Organizations are created to fulfill a purpose. Corporations, small businesses, churches, colleges, social clubs and even the family are organizations invented for a purpose. We become involved in organizations for many reasons. Some are work related, some educate us, and some are for socializing. The reasons are endless. Each is directed by expectations and roles within the objectives of the organization. We are all members of organizations and we cannot be without them.
When misfortunes happen in our lives, and the goals of the organizations to which we belong can no longer support us, our lives can become disoriented. For example, the expectations and roles of our financial and investment institutions and our mortgage companies collapsed causing an economical crisis. The result was unemployment, foreclosures, and loss of retirement funds. People experienced fear, depression, anger and loneliness. It also caused a breakdown of roles in the family for many causing dysfunction and resulting in pain, anger and sometimes violence.
The impact of organizational downturns can lead to varied attempts to solve the problem. Some people leave the group and reach out to other organizations hoping to fulfill their needs through other avenues. Some turn to counselors, self help books or groups. Others turn to their religious faith. Some reflect on their priorities regarding what is really important in life and how they can make their lives more meaningful. Too many of us have not found a solution to the changes going on in our country today.
We want changes. We want to make our lives better. We want to see our friends and family’s lives become more secure. For too long Wall Street, our banks, mortgage companies, investment companies, and government have not made the necessary changes. We seek retribution on those who have made our lives that much more difficult. The solution lies in a fundamental change within these organizations. A change that does not come from the outside, but one that comes from the inside.
There are people that have a different understanding of organizational systems. These people look at solutions to problems not from the outside but from the inside. Mission statements change from profit-oriented objectives to humanly-oriented goals. They seek to bring spirit into the very fabric of the organization. People at all levels begin interacting in a mindful way that improves the organization as a whole.
The organizational spirit is one of nine universal spiritual archetypes that respond to their purpose in life. Her organizational calling is to transform the very nature of our interactions within the organization. She focuses on tearing down the boundaries and creating space for the human spirit to express itself. New purposes, human purposes, change the system.
Financial experts claim the housing crisis started the recession. Mortgage brokers practiced predatory lending habits with high risk borrowers. The core cause of this crisis is the immoral acts committed by mortgage industries. Now they are being investigated for fraudulent lending practices and securities fraud.
The organizational spirit does not accept the habits and practices of the established structure. She seeks to get beneath and beyond the way things are to the purposes of being fully human, not to deny her spirit, but to listen to it. She poses questions like, “Why? Who said so? Where does that come from? What is that all about?”
Most of our modern organizations do not speak to our fully human possibility and the integration with our spirit. Organizational life is too embedded in our social biography. Our organizations, educational institutions, military apparatus, religious groups all encompass so much of society’s institutional life and so little of the possibilities to which our human spirit calls us to do and to be.
But keep in mind that organizations were invented to maintain a purpose. We are not an unmindful society. We can be mindful about our collective behavior. We can and do make choices. If our organizations do not support us, we can change them, dispose of them or invent new ones.
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