I'm reading Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken, and something just occurred to me, which I'm sure has already occurred to many other people. That is, that most businesses and organizations seem to have one of two primary goals: to improve life for the employers, employed, and customers, or to assure self-perpetuation. My guess is that the approach taken by the place where someone works is likely to be reflected in their own personal goals. Thus, in the first type of business employers seek ways to help customers, such as improving product quality, and helping employees, such as holiday bonuses. Employees similarly try to find ways to help employers, by doing their best at their job, and to help customers, by being efficient. And customers try to help employers by providing feedback about their products, services and employees, and try to help employees by being reasonable in their expectations.
On the other hand, businesses and organizations that have self-preservation as their main goal tend to sacrifice the good of others for the good of self. People trained by these standards do as little as they can to get as much as they can at the expense of all others.
I think that when a business, organization, or person begins to become more preoccupied with self-preservation than with doing good for all, that entity is headed down a sad path to isolation. I.e. if all you care about is yourself, in the end you'll be left by yourself. This would spell doom for probably any business or organization eventually, and possibly for people as well.
