Salon Thinks That Ayn Rand is to Blame For Sears' Troubles Over The Last Five Years
Instead of looking at an inept manager, blaming Ayn Rand, is progressives' explanation for Sears losses lately. To draw that much derision, Objectivism must be making a few inroads.
I'm shocked, shocked!
The fact that this CEO, Eddie Lampert, pitted his managers against each other in the misguided belief that competition was always good in every circumstance and situation demonstrates his rejection of the idea that collective action actually has legitimate value in some circumstances. For example, just look at sports: in any team based sport, you have two teams that compete against each other, but the individual players still work together within their respective teams. If the players within the team competed against each other instead of working together, they would almost surely lose to the team that acted like, well, a team. A big business should be treated like a team, which means cooperation rather than competition. (This idea is also echoed in Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends & Influence People.")
That's why when I first watched the Atlas Shrugged movies and then read the book, I couldn't help but feel that it was the ideology of a small businessman, and not a large one. If Hank Rearden is really a big business owner, where is his team? His vice president? His CFO? His COO? His financial advisers? His board of directors? These are all critical elements of a big business, but none of them were depicted in Atlas Shrugged. Instead, the picture we're given is more akin to that of a small business: one individual running the company by himself, with his employees directly beneath him, and that's it. That is not how a large business or corporation operates.
I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged as a story, but I do worry that people who buy into its philosophy too heavily will be blinded to all this, and neglect the power of teamwork and cooperation in their business strategies. The actions of Eddie Lampert in his mismanagement of Sears is strong evidence to support this theory.
That's why I base my own personal economic philosophy on Robert Kiyosaki, and not Ayn Rand. His ideas are far more practical and realistic, and they come from actual real world experience, whereas Ayn Rand never actually owned a business, and relied entirely on imagination and speculation for her ideas.
I won't argue your legitimate collective action nor team management ideas at this point, other than to offer an old engineering saw, 'A camel is the result of a design teams efforts to develop a horse.'
But yes, there are definitely times where individuals can create work that is superior to what a team could do. Artwork and music are two prime examples, and sometimes technological inventions as well. But any large scale operation will always benefit from the collaboration of many people working together for a common goal. The power of teamwork and collective effort should not be so lightly discarded.