Not just people (Greenbriar 3)

One of the arguments made about agency during the Greenbriar Inn dinner sponsored by Dale Hatfield was that organizational agency is just shorthand for the action of the group’s human members. This brief post summarizes my rebuttal of that claim.

Ogregores and Agency (Greenbriar 2)

It’s important to understand the nature of organizational agency in order to reckon with the scale and complexity of the institutions shaping public, private, and planetary futures. My thinking has evolved since writing Defining Agency in 2022. It’s time for an update. 

"Evil" Corporations (Greenbriar 1)

When a tiger takes a small child, people usually don't consider it to be an evil being. It's doing what tigers do. Animals are not moral agents; only people are. By the same token, while organizations may have agency, they are not moral agents. It’s an error to think of them as good or evil. (For a contrary view asserting that artificial agents, primarily computer systems but also organizations, can be moral agents in some sense, see Floridi & Sanders, 2004.) (References at the end.)

The Ogregods: An Ogregore Pantheon

I’ve invented a pantheon that represents collective social agents, i.e., ogregores—the “ogregods.” 

Ogregore analogies

Ogregores—organizations that demonstrate collective agency—are all around us but are hard to grasp because they are not human, even though their most important parts are people. I will explore some analogies to get a handle on them, starting with ancient gods and ending with sci-fi hive minds.

Fire and Earth: The Doomed Union of Nex and Daim

Another ogregore story, this time about a failed romance. Not a trickster story, like MoeV Unmasked or Wezl's Ghosts.

MoeV Unmasked: An ogregore story

Here’s the second installment of ogregore stories, this one about deception and regulatory capture. It’s another trickster story, just like the first one about Wezl’s Ghosts.

Wezl’s Ghosts: An ogregore story

 Marissa Grunes has encouraged me to develop mythic stories about ogregores. Here’s my first attempt, about a trickster who used ghosts to fool their ruler.

Advertising to AIs

 Agentic AI is a trending term. If the hype comes true, perhaps all that will be left for humans is to buy things. But what if AIs start clicking on ads?

Tech & Mythology Project Snapshot – Jan 2025

Time for another project snapshot. There were earlier snapshots in Jul 2020, Oct 2020, Feb 2021, and Nov 2021.

The Goldman Sachs ogregore

A recent Goldman Sachs reorg demonstrates an exception to my claim that “leaders love to take credit for corporate success, bolstering the impression that CEO's determine corporate action.” There’s no mention in the coverage of the CEO.

Hidden complexity in brains and ogregores

Susan Tonkin gave me an intriguing reason why it’s hard to “see” ogregores for what they are, in response to my post Bad Outcomes make it easier to see group agency. She noted that while it’s simple to delimit an organization’s make-up (listing the employees, for example) and easy to see its outputs (like products, jobs, and stock price), we have great trouble thinking through the complexity in the middle. 

Another one ducks the blame

 I've observed that leaders love to take credit for corporate success, bolstering the impression that CEO's determine corporate action, but they disappear when things go wrong. American Airlines failed business travel overhaul offers the latest example.

Loki as Fixer

I’ve come to to doubt the universal description of the Norse god Loki as a trickster. Perhaps “fixer” would fit him just as well, or better.

Bad Outcomes make it easier to see group agency

Some say one can’t ascribe agency to organizations. They argue that group agency is just shorthand when we can’t be bothered to detail the motives and actions of all the individuals involved. Cases where a group acts in a way that most if not all its members would disavow make it easier to see collective agency.