The Anthropomorphization of Business

Reading Robert Reich’s 2007 Supercapitalism book has been an interesting experience. We differ on many fundamentals of the nature of government, business, and citizenship, but I will admit there is one issue that gave me significant pause in that I just hadn’t thought of it before (nor had anyone particularly mentioned it before). It has to do with the anthropomorphization of business. Essentially, this is the process of labeling businesses with human-like qualities, such as desire, intent, and characteristics like “friendly” or insincere. He makes some very interesting points about the changed nature of our perception of business, and how we’re dangerously close to assuming that “sets of contractual obligations” are living, breathing, thinking, caring entities.

This is one of those moments where I feel like someone just explained what a tree is for the first time - while I’m standing in the middle of a forest. Reich argues that these anthropomorphic characteristics are disturbing our abilities to recognize that people are in charge of businesses, and that just because multiple people may agree on a course of action that defines the strategy and activities of a business, it doesn’t mean that suddenly that business has legal rights like a person nor the distinction of being anything more than a binding financial agreement between the involved parties.

Looking at contemporary organizations and their marketing strategies, it’s easy to understand how we’ve reached the conclusion that somehow businesses are human-like entities… We encounter products such as the “TomTom” GPS device which are even listening to our voices and telling us what to do - it’s easy to see how we develop relationships with our inanimate objects. For Christmas this year, I bought my dad a Nabaztag wifi-rabbit, which even requests that you name it. Of course, we’ve been anthropomorphizing objects for ages (consider the common nomenclature that a ship or sailing vessel might be referred to as a “she”), but by applying human traits to amoral businesses can lead us down a perilous mental processing lapse, where we assume that businesses are responsible for more than just developing a product that customers want, and that will provide investors a return on their investment.

This all, of course, goes back to my previous post regarding Corporate Social Responsibility. Next time you catch yourself watching the news and hear about a company that “doesn’t care” or “is nice”, remember that these businesses are doing these things because the individuals within those organizations have a responsibility to their customers and shareholders, not to the “stakeholder” groups that are all the rage today. Businesses are not humans, nor should they have human-like traits. They’re vessels for improving the ability to satisfy customer wants and needs and fulfill investor demands for returns on investments.