Economic Pressures

Economic and Systems Thinking

We can, through empirical analysis, determine systematic faults of various policy decisions, and in doing so, integrate further analysis defining socially just and pragmatically sound changes to policy, deconstructing broken processes and realigning social agreements toward their intended goals. We can see waste, everywhere, of human potential and of well-intentioned actions; through evidence and logic, we can reasonably reflect on failed endeavors and focus on more effective means of creating a positive environment for human development.

Utopia of Endless Exploitation: The Essence of Neoliberalism

Bourdieu, P. (Dec, 1998). Utopia of endless exploitation: The essence of neoliberalism. Le Monde. http://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu

In his critique of neoliberalism and the deregulation of the finance industry, Bourdieu argues that self-governed markets will fail to deliver on “the public interest” as the “strong discourse” of neoliberalism destroys public interest communities (“collective structures”) as it drives a “struggle of all against all at all levels of the hierarchy” in maintaining employment and engagement in labour. Individuals are driven further toward temporary work, enduring the structural violence of unemployment, with dwindling socialized safeties, as neoliberalism encourages the “privatisation of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses”. While there are successful aspects of neoliberal policy, Bourdieu demonstrates that the policy itself is incomplete and its failings are apparent in its implementation, in the “poverty of an increasingly large segment of the most economically advanced societies, the extraordinary growth in income differences… [and] the imposition everywhere … of that sort of moral Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner institutes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all action and behaviour”. Bourdieu suggests that neoliberalism is a flawed premise on mathematical and social terms, breaking moral norms and social cohesion.

My own experience with neoliberalism has been ambivalent: as an American, I’ve been raised with the implicit acceptance of neoliberalism as a cultural norm, and meritocracy as the primary means of social and economic development and “freedom”. While I greatly admire the concept of “laissez faire” governance, its implementation must be tempered by a sense of social justice and shared humanity. Further, the inefficiencies of free markets are well-documented in economic and mathematical theory: free markets are easily captured by strong interests, and they are not a meritocracy, they are merely another form of governance. Winston S. Churchill quipped: “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” years later Margaret Thatcher argued for neoliberal autocracy, and consequent oligarchy, stating that “there is no alternative”. Bourdieu does well in criticizing the flaws of neoliberalism, a sort of social anarchy and implicit social darwinism, but he does not provide solid ground for alternatives, while perhaps implicitly he is arguing for a return to social democracy. I am left wanting for alternatives.

An Anthropology of Structural Violence

Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/382250

Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist, reports his first-hand experience of working in a resource-starved hospital in Haiti, and the historical background of the nation’s underdevelopment. Coining the term “structural violence”, Farmer notes how successive foreign government interventions over two centuries lead to the exploitation of the natural resources and destruction of cultural capital in the island nation. Starting with French colonial activity and segueing into United States politics, Haiti has been systematically disabled from participating as an autonomous and independent country: the consequence of internal strife and external pressures has lead to horrific rates of poverty and inadequate medical treatment of the majority of the nation’s citizens.

This first-hand account of a medical professional is trying desperately to shine light on the awful conditions largely caused by two great colonial powers (France and the U.S.A.), is mildly traumatizing to me as a reader, and has it reengaged my consideration of the historic context of present inequalities in poverty-stricken areas. Haiti, on one hand, is looked at as an independent nation operating between the neoliberal global economy and the donor influence and withholding of world superpowers; but this picture is incomplete, and intellectually dishonest. As Farmer demonstrates: Haiti has had its resources stripped, it has been systematically exploited for so long, and for the benefit of now prosperous countries: the U.S.A. and France have profited tremendously, and their conditional withholding of aide and continued politicking is a continuation of their disservice to Haiti as a republic.

Indicators of Bias

Identifying System Bias

The following readings tease out the strong discourse in economic thinking, around objectivity and decision-making through the allocation of resources, and finding misconceptions and non-aligned assumptions about why and how policy decisions are made. While not mentioned here, Michel Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” plays a strong part in this integration, as he notes that discourses are internalized by individuals, further contributing to their power and the hegemony of leadership (whether government or corporate).

Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases

Caliskan, A, et al. (2017). Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases. Science, 356(6334), 183-186. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4230

Caliskan and fellow researchers demonstrate empirically, the presence of bias in human language, and I believe demonstrate with mathematical proof what many social theorists have stated through their own critical discourses: “stereotyped biases [are present] in textual data that reflect everyday human culture”, and the analysis of human culture through statistical induction will necessarily acquire these biases. The very concept of using machine learning or statistics to produce justifications or policy decisions is impacted by the same limitations of clinical prediction: cultural bias as driven by “historical cultural associations [and unexamined] prejudiced outcomes”. Where we are cautioned about the emergence of new technologies in machine learning and the fallibility of entrenched cultural violence, Caliskan et. al express hope that the “explicit characterization of acceptable behavior… [the] nascent field of fairness in ... of nondiscrimination in decision-making [and] explicit instruction of rules of appropriate conduct” can be used to counteract the effects of prejudice in machine learning algorithms.

This article clearly identifies why and how prejudice can enter machine learning systems as well as the dangers of those prejudices in perpetuating unjust decision-making. The authors cite previous discourse in prejudice noting the impact that ethnic stereotypes have on the labour force in such mundane steps as getting an interview. Their focus, necessarily, is on the mathematics of bias in machine learning, and the cognitive complexity needed to work to compartmentalize that bias. My hope is that this discourse brings additional “hard science” or empirical and mathematical data into the realm of social justice, demonstrating the effects that prejudice have in a society, and how that prejudice requires actions that a “laissez faire” discourse of neoliberalism simply neglects. Unfortunately, the article does not reference the myriad of machine learning mishaps that have occurred over the last decade, nor reference to the economic costs of prejudice and the structural violence that exists in the economics of the modern world.

Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066

Haraway argues that a “feminist objectivity” of “situated knowledge” (p. 582) must be taken into account as part of scientific discourse: any measurement that is presented through scientific inquiry is necessarily situated in a social context. The social bias of the experiment or measurement can not be separated to create an atom of “knowledge”, though many devices do employ what Haraway terms “god tricks” that provide the illusion of objectivity. Haraway uses the perception of vision as a device for her argument, noting that many technical devices represent measurements as visual information, though the visual representation is by no means a true reality; the presentation of astrological measurements, for examine, will often use colorization schemes that are as much art as science. Haraway notes that vision, measurements, always have a subject, a positioning or context in which the observation is made, and whatever technological advantage is created by the use of scientific instruments, the operator of the instrument and the context in which their observation is made is one that is invariably situated in class, power, and social presence.

This article balances self-deprecating humor, with an exquisite survey of social theories on Objectivity. This tone creates a cognitive frame for Haraway’s principle argument: objective measurements are always subject to the observational context in which they are made. Haraway excellently frames her own frustration for absurdist arguments of relativity, while ably refining her concept of “situated knowledge” to enable objectivity, by expanding it into including context, instead of simply destroying it by stating that everything is “subjective”. Her colorful use of language further breaks with the traditions of academic discourse, again demonstrating room for thought, intentionally challenging her audience to see their own bias.

ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development Chapters 2 - 3

Unwin, T. (Ed.) (2009). ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 2 and 3

Unwin integrates a remarkable breadth of source material to refine a discourse about how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are relevant to socio-economic development. Development itself, “synonymous with ‘poverty elimination’” (p. 15), Unwin argues, should be defined by a “more subtle, culturally shaped and socially relevant” discourse. While globalization is a “a very ancient process [in which] the pace and scale of interaction between people and societies has [always] been increasing” (p. 16), it is “the introduction of new ICTs in the last two decades of the 20th century [that dramatically increased] the potential for ever faster accumulation [of capital]” (p. 17). This is driven by “the scale at which [rapid communication] is possible… as the effects of distance become less… those with access to ICTs can gain huge amounts of information [creating a] new type of information or knowledge society” (p. 18 - 19) Unwin attempts to create a framework in which ICTs “transform the lives of poor people and marginalized communities” (p. 26) and their “empowerment” (p. 33). This requires a bottom up model working with the needs of such communities as they emerge, the “acquisition of information and mechanisms through which communications take place” (p. 48) and an “increasing emphasis on local practices and solutions” (p. 51). In contrast to a “single solution [that] will suit everyone” (p. 56) solutions must be developed that serve a multitude of needs and are actually available and usable by those whom they seek to serve.

These chapters outline common misconceptions and missteps in communications outreach, firmly identifying the cause of these missteps as artifacts of capitalist endeavours: outreach to marginalized communities is often launched with methods that assume the primacy of capitalism, that these communities should and ought to be brought into the wider economic rule of global capitalism. Whether through donor programs or through commercial banking (e.g. Structural Adjustment Programs), most efforts to develop ICTs are more focused on their own goals, than the benefits which would emerge from the local communities they are engaging. Unwin illustrates this well, through his weaving of historical citations and discourse amongst fields of communications, information theory, economics and development texts.

Learning as Disruption

Bulwarks of Continual Improvement

Myriad researchers suggest that the world of human endeavor has become more dynamic: our fundamental modes of economy have changed from simple, rapidly taught tasks into a complex networked society in which knowledge-work and the ability to adapt are invaluable. While technology has undoubtedly altered societal norms, the underlying need to learn, in order to survive, is not a new concept; nor is the need for group learning and adaptivity. Disruption has always acted as a forcing function on groups, and human beings are a distinctly communal learning species. By tracing the abilities of humans to learn through adaptation, at various units of analysis, from the individual to the collective, we can understand how knowledge is effectively produced, how to teach through disruption and learn through failure.

Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct.

Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 23-43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305

In their masterful synthesis of the “body of conceptual and empirical work” (p. 23) of the concept of psychological safety, Edmonson and Lei demonstrate a preponderance of evidence on how psychological safety is a bulwark against uncertainty, as it “facilitates the willing contribution of ideas and actions” of individual participants in group settings (p. 24). Three analytical units are defined, individual-level, organizational-level and group level: building from the “voice behavior” of individuals, e.g. promotive (“we ought do this”), prohibitive (“this is not working”), we can easily understand how organizational-level learning relies on the flow of information through such speech acts. Noting that “organizational learning [strategies] enable company dynamism and competitive advantage” (p. 28) and in the dynamics of innovation and risk, there is ample need for “failure-based learning” (p. 29) to promote cooperation and trust and overall unit performance (pp. 31 - 33). While there is ample evidence that psychological safety is an important aspect of high performing teams, there is further need for study: boundary spanning behaviors and conditions should be further analyzed, with consistency of an analytic framework tightened, cross-cultural analysis should be performed, and causality better demonstrated beyond correlative metrics.

This review of the state of research in psychological safety provides an excellent foundation for reference and further research, defining the term itself as one of openness to interpersonal risk, and illustrating analysis at a variety of unit levels (from individual to group); it demonstrates a clear research methodology and continues to push for future research, not merely hanging its laurels on what work has already been accomplished. In reflecting the activity and consensus at the group level “that psychological safety is essentially a group-level phenomenon” (p. 30) it undercuts an otherwise broad perspective, by rooting to a level of abstraction. This seems to be unintentional, as further on, recommendations for additional cross-level study and studies in causality are made with full enthusiasm. There appear to be tradeoffs in a methodology such as this: where psychological safety was used as the primary keyword, and concepts around “trust”, secondary keywords, there is a gap in research around individual learning, group learning, and adaptivity; with a clear thesis that psychological safety promotes organizational learning, one has to wonder why the keywords of “knowledge management” or specific concepts such as the “growth mindset” were not included.

Reimagining Global Health

Farmer, P., Kim J.Y, Kleinman, A., et al. (2013). Reimagining Global Health.

This textbook covers a broad range of health care dilemmas and narratives from the perspective of medical anthropology: from historic interactions of anthropologists in medical contexts to modern medicine and the integrations (successful and failed) of social sciences in assisting and/or driving treatment outcomes. There is little embellishment in stating that the failure of world nations to live up to the ideals of the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration, in which signing nations declared an intent to deliver primary healthcare to all peoples, is one of the most tragic stories of our time. It would seem that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, authored 30 years later, has also remained stagnant, following the significant change in geopolitics in the 1980s toward a world-wide neoliberal paradigm.

While much of the textbook details the gloom and misery of human existence in environments of poverty and destitution, there is a hint of positive affect, relating to a particular action by the United States in 2004: the PEPFAR program (President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) “redefined the possible”, bringing sufficient resources to African AIDS relief workers to roll-out antiretroviral drug treatments across the continent. Just a few years prior, Andrew Natsios the Adminstrator of the United States Agency for International Development, publicly stated such an effort would be financial infeasible and otherwise unwise. Additionally, United States corporations and the governing White House maintained intellectual property rights, and the right toward pricing power, as supreme over the lives that might be saved by engaging in accessible pricing discrimination in drug treatments.

Teaching Smart People How to Learn

Argyis, C. (1991). Teaching smart people how to learn. Harvard Business Review, 4(2), 99-109.

Argyis makes the bold statement: “most people don’t know how to learn [-- they are] not very good at it … the well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership positions in the modern corporation”, and he does so in the Harvard Business Review. He continues: “they rarely experience failure… [they need] new and more effective ways [to break] down the defenses that block learning … in the contours of ‘knowledge work’”. While this article focuses specifically on “managements consults”, perhaps a limiting factor, and his statement that they are the “epitome of the highly educated professionals” may be questioned, his notes that they are graduates from MBA programs in “[top] U.S. business schools” provides some adequate support as to why they’re an important sample. He notes their aversion to embarrassment, to failure, their defensiveness, and despite a commitment to continuous improvement: their lack of sustaining improvement and critical reflection. They had candor but were unable to develop a “common language” and so “made improvement impossible”. By developing an “educational experience designed to teach senior managers how to reason productively is to connect the program to real business problems [using] case studies”, Argyis is able to employ leadership in their own self-evident reflection on their performance. The case study process brings to light lessons learned that they would otherwise miss or dismiss: it “legitimizes talking about issues” from a place of psychological safety which may be “emotional -- even painful” but serves an important purpose in “continuous improvement [and] learning how to learn”. The article clearly demonstrates the bias of well-educated and high performance folk in management have toward defensive behavior, and the necessity of using techniques to develop the requisite psychological safety for empirical learning behaviors.

Management by Narrative

Story-Telling and Mythology

Human organizations develop narratives communicated through social networks, from positions of power, peer and situated contexts. The quality of communication and the degree to which participants are able to perceive and be perceived as understanding one another is vital to the well-functioning operation of material activities. These readings demonstrate the important role of narrative in a range of situations relevant to pragmatic management.

New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies

Dolphijn, R., & Tuin, I. v. d., (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. (pp. 85-115). In Harman G., B. Latour (Eds.), Series: New Metaphysics. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Open Humanities Press imprint at mPublishing. https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.11515701.0001.001

Dolphijn and Tuin review salient publications on modernism and materialism to deliver a mapping or cartography of the analytic frame of “new materialism” and its applicability to the sciences. This framework demands that the “commonalities of realism and social constructivism [be] recognized” (p. 98) as intersections, not abstracted into a dualism of “transcendental and humanist tendencies” (p. 98). By positioning an analysis as a study in the transversivity of the semiotic as well as the physical, new materialism demands that the “dismantling of binary oppositions” be a critical activity pursued with full philosophical rigor. Dolphijn and Tuin’s use of the word “cartography” instead of “classification” serves as a demonstration, both a pedagogical device and a core delivery to the construct of new materialism.

This writing is at once spanning in its breadth, and focused in its intent. Critically engaging post-modernism, the authors bring a sort of empirical structure to a rather nebulous school of thought: they resynthesize the components of (post-)modernism, which can be likened to the soul, with its indivisible counterpart, (post-)materialism, the body. The myriad references to thought pieces critical of transcendent objectivity (such as those of Donna J. Haraway and Bruno Latour) help make the work more accessible, contextualising arguments through mapping of well-appreciated discourses, and so enabling the reader to traverse a range of analytical landmarks, as though consuming a cartography.

Bridges between Mental Health Care and Religious Healing in Puerto Rico: The Outcomes of an Early Experiment

Koss-Chioino, J.D. (2009). Bridges between Mental Health Care and Religious Healing in Puerto Rico: The Outcomes of an Early Experiment (pp. 221-224). In R. A. Hahn & M. C. Inhorn (Eds.) Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374643.003.0009

Bridging what could fairly be called the pseudoscience of alternative healing, Koss-Chioino effectively argues that religious healing can make an effective contribution to the health of patients underserved by professional mental health care regimes. Unlike the distillation of folk remedies into molecular treatments in the treatment of physical ailments, treatments for psychic dysphoria can not simply be isolated and refined from their counterparts in popular medicine. Thus, the narrative of healing that exists in the context of popular (or “traditional”) medicine may be situated as a “complement to biomedical healthcare [with] cooperative arrangements” (p. 223 - 224) and the potentials for cross-training and cross-referencing of psychiatric cases and psychological distress.

Koss-Chioino demonstrates a laudable courage both in her professional (and ethnographic) experiences, with full understanding as to the controversial nature of spirit healing as an appreciable medical treatment: her attitude and concepts are well rooted in science, carrying out years of ethnographic study and documenting in an accessible manner the various ways in which lay healers of mental health were able to associate with professional communities of psychiatric and psychological healing. Documenting both the larger sociopolitical climate around such work by demonstrating how skepticism is ill-suited to mental health, when applied from a context of material objectivity, the author illustrates the possibility of successful outcomes. As she notes, “Spiritists and therapists began to refer themselves to the opposite healing system for help: they later began referring a few patients”; this is not an occurance of wishful thinking or enculturated fantasy, but an interaction of abilities, essentially pragmatic and engaging a broader perspective of mental health, noting there may be both biophysical and psycho-narrative causes and cures for mental distress.

Narrative medicine in the context of community-based practice

Murphy, J.W. (2018). Narrative medicine in the context of community-based practice. In S. Arxer & J. Murphy (Eds.) Dimensions of Community-Based Projects in Health Care (pp. 15-23). International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61557-8_2

Murphy engages in a summary of narrative as an indivorcable component of effective medical treatment, criticising the “standard medical model [which] is based on Cartesianism, otherwise known as dualism [where] subjectivity is either dismissed or marginalized” (pp. 16-17). Beyond simply recusing the biomedical establishment for a poor bedside manner, Murphy recommends that medical professionals recognize through “dialogue, personal or collective narratives [health care needs] in the manner intended by their authors [so] that all expressions of health or illness be treated as intelligible and with dignity” (pp. 20). This systems view demands the practitioner realize that there are “multiple risk factors and their interaction [exposed through narrative has] an internal logic that provides sound information; data validity is thus a local determination”. Indeed, Murphy prescribes the physician to be more than an instrument of discrimination, between objective and subjective reality, between biomedical practice and patronly warmth; Murphy requires the healer to be culturally competent in “local knowledge” as well as an excellent communicator in individual dialog.

What strikes me, with Murphy’s review, is the recognition of prior good behaviors of practices of medicine. Recognizing that there have been successful programs that have used local context and situated interventions in an appropriately holistic manner, through multidisciplinary community health programs, incorporating the local knowledge of lay practitioners and the interdisciplinary pragmatism of a range of medical and social science influences, it seems that the evidence of a better way, of doing medicine, has been available for some time. There seems to be a structural dysfunction within the community and commerce of the medical profession, perhaps related to an economic impulse or other misincentive, that draws medicine back toward dualism. This area of speculation is, however, out of scope of an exhortation to the medical establishment to return back to its commitment toward community-based health through appropriate interventions and a worldly perspective.

An existential hermeneutic philosophical approach to project management

Rolfe, B., Segal, S., & Cicmil, S. (2016). An existential hermeneutic philosophical approach to project management. Project Management Journal, 47(3), 48-62. Accessed: https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/existential-hermeneutic-philosophical-approach-project-management-10137

Project management is ubiquitous in modern enterprise, yet its definition may at times be fluid and difficult to explicitly state, in any given situation. This is, inherent to the role, as Rolfe et al argue: “there are certain conditions under which philosophy becomes essential for project management… [such as in the common activities of] reframing or redescribing of assumptions, working through the space of disruption, and bringing into being the results of a project.” (p. 48). While project management may incorporate scientific tools, it is fundamentally a communicative endeavor involving language games, bridging the vocabulary and intentions of organizational participants and girding the inevitable disruption of conventions and destruction of plans, as is the consequence of operating business in a competitive environment. Instead of enforcing prediction on what is inherently unpredictable, project managers must shift their paradigm toward reinterpretation and active discourse, an existentialist narrative. Rolfe et al, thus redefine project management as an activity of redescription, and an eternally incomplete practice in which metalanguages are consistently redeveloped so as to suit projects and their associated actors.

Drawing strongly on prior work by Heidegger and Rorty, the authors make a cogent case against “scientific” positivism in the practice of project management. Where risk management professions keep in close mind the potential for unknowns to arise, project managers have long held an ideal of rigid adherence. Through thoughtful analysis, we can begin to see how the role of project manager and their efforts may be better aligned as one of ironic redescriptions, using a mastery of language and an understanding of how to bring together the disparate local knowledges of participants into new, albeit temporary, places of agreement. Largely, it seems, the project manager is a storyteller, helping groups to revise their narrative, as new information becomes available and latent assumptions surface.

Access to Business Archives: U.S. Access Philosophies

Tousey, B., & Adkins, E. (2007, May). Access to Business Archives: U.S. Access Philosophies. Japan-U.S. Archives Seminar, May 2007. Accessed: http://www.archivists.org/publications/proceedings/accesstoarchives/10_B-TOUSEY_E-ADKINS.pdf

Major United States corporations control a vast amount of resources, financial and physical as well as social: the employees, contractors and customers of these groups generate an enormous amount of human activity and with it, data. Corporate archivists, Tousey and Adkins note, serve a valuable role within these businesses in “leveraging their heritage” (p 1.). Archived resources may be used to “enhance the “reputation of a company and to both communicate and build on a corporate culture” (p. 2). With these vast sources of knowledge, there is an opportunity to serve the public good, but such service shall necessarily be subservient to the interests of the corporation. While private institutions, corporations are surprisingly welcoming of research requests, “a full two-thirds of those surveyed have allowed outside researchers to physically review their records” (p. 3) -- an author notes in their own experience that “only a very small portion of our external requests come from the academic research community” (p. 3). Requests may be for cultural or practical artifacts, as many customers have affective connections to the products of the corporation or pragmatic intentions such as to reproduce or repair an associated item. This stated, all research requests are reviewed by these gatekeepers on a case by case basis to determine intent as well as the level of risk to harm such research may bring to the company. While many corporations have gatekeepers, Tousey and Adkins “note that [some] companies have donated their archival records to a public research institution.” (p. 5) and so many lessons, case studies and other bits of corporate practice may be analyzed with less supervision.

The perspective these corporate archivists give us valuable: they tell us from their position the concerns and conditions they must weigh, both in maintaining the archive and in maintaining the integrity of their respective company and its stakeholders. While we can agree that done well, these activities may benefit both the company and the public interest, it seems that public benefits are rarely made a priority. Not mentioned are the public documents of corporations that are required by government, such as financial information on public companies. This requirement demonstrates a philosophical basis for the exposure of corporate information to public scrutiny. We may imagine that the authors of this article are timid on the lines of critical inspection, in protection of their corporate patronage. What I miss, in seeing this, is a call for more openness, as very few corporate artifacts truly warrant the sense of propriety and abundance of caution that seems to be exercised. With little support, massive amounts of intranet information may be accessed by consultants, contractors and other outsiders engaged with a corporation. One wonders if the mediation of corporate archivists gatekeepers may signify a wasted opportunity for knowledge proliferation in the broader public good, about business practices; if only they were librarians and not gatekeepers.