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June 11, 2001—Bonds
Overcoming Boundaries
Creative Partnership. We can't wait to dip into John
Bayley's new book, Widower's House, which takes up his life after the
death of his wife, Iris Murdoch, the awesomely talented, mind-providing
English novelist. Previously we had hailed here his Elegy for Iris,
an account of his marriage to and deep bonds with his wife (see Best of
Class #81). He has, in the meanwhile, followed up with Iris and Her
Friends, which we will also have to read. His new book deals with his
ongoing grief and, finally, his passage into a new life.
Strategic Alliances. One could wish for such closeness in all
relationships, even in business. It is the sort of unity rarely achieved in
professional partnerships, riddled as they are by both greed and ego. As we
note in our forthcoming Annual Report on Annual Reports 2001,
sympathetic collaboration is one of the dimensions chief executives must
strive for in today's networked business environment. They must achieve
harmony with enterprises and institutions with which they have no formal
legal or economic ties. Either self-interest or a love for major collective
accomplishment must drive them to work together with partners they cannot
command.
Josiah Royce. The American philosopher Royce had it right. In looking
at gold-rush California, he shows how self-interest propels people into
community--and then how a sense of community makes a number of good things
happen. See his California from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second
Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (1856). Collective self-interest
eventually gives birth to global altruism, a tendency we must graft onto the
free-market economics now sweeping the world.
Yubeng. We cite an example of universal partnership on Two Rivers
this week. Yubeng, a reservoir of Tibetan culture and biodiversity, has led
to a joint effort by Yunnan officials and western conservationists to
preserve this special place standing in the shadow of Kawegebo, Tibet's
second holiest mountain.
Of course, we are saying here that successful strategic alliances assume
that business executives can overcome a contradiction: Can they achieve
close community in a marketplace riven by the forces of competition? We
think so.
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