The Office

I read this a few days ago now, but it has been on my mind ever since. It is an attempt to take what “The Office” has to say about workplace dynamics at least somewhat seriously. Not being well-versed in management theory, I’m not sure how good this thinking is, but it is provocative. It is The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to “The Office”.

The Office is not a random series of cynical gags aimed at momentarily alleviating the existential despair of low-level grunts. It is a fully-realized theory of management that falsifies 83.8% of the business section of the bookstore.

If I ever thought technology was a solution to workplace disfunction, I do not now. Rather, it is the institutional structure mandated by incorporation that makes for problems:

[The theory is] based on the axiom that organizations don’t suffer pathologies; they are intrinsically pathological constructs.

A good reason to look at the Social Enterprise, or Community Interest Company, IMO.

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