Beneath the current economic crisis lies another crisis of far greater proportions: the depreciation in companies of community—people’s sense of belonging to and caring for something larger than themselves. Decades of short-term management, in the United States especially, have inflated the importance of CEOs and reduced others in the corporation to fungible commodities—human resources to be “downsized” at the drop of a share price. The result: mindless, reckless behavior that has brought the global economy to its knees.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.