The Anthropomorphism Dilemma: Narrating Nonhuman Agency

I believe that mythical stories can help us grasp large, cohesive organizations that possess agency—aka ogregores. However, there’s a wrinkle. Most if not all stories involve human-like characters. On the other hand, ogregores aren’t human and don’t behave like them. Animist narratives which portray non-human agents without using anthropomorphism and psychological research into the causes of anthropomorphism may point a way around the dilemma. 

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.

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.

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.

Tech ogregore LLM jokes

Jokes about organizations shed light on how we think of them as entities, so I asked some LLMs. Here are the best. (I occasionally crossed out some LLM verbiage and replaced it with my own.)

CEO-employee agency loops

I’m intrigued by the relationship between ogregores and individuals, such as between employee groups and leaders. The usual assumption is that the CEO directs employees, but I suspect employees can direct the CEO, too. That is, employees and CEOs can form a principal-agent loop.

The Paintskin Squeeze

A friend who owns a New York City apartment told me that he’s only responsible for maintenance “from the paint in.” I feel like the paint, squeezed between the physical and mental forces inside my body, and the social and physical forces outside.

Wild West ogregores

John Anderson's WSJ review of ‘Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War’ on Netflix highlights the collective/corporate considerations behind the individualist mythologizing of the Old West.

Who’s in Charge?

In a profile of swing-state Wisconsin where affordable housing is a growing concern with voters, the Wall Street Journal quotes Kayla Lange, who’s struggling to make ends meet, saying, “It’s gotten out of control, and I blame the people in charge.” The story notes that voters ranked housing as their second biggest concern when it comes to high prices—behind only groceries—in a July WSJ poll. The trouble is that the people in charge don’t have much influence on the problem. Ogregores may be a better body to blame and try to affect.

Party ogregores: Biden and the Democratic Party elite

There has been non-stop coverage of President Biden’s frailties since the debate fiasco, examining the motives, actions, and opinions of Biden, people in his inner circle, party operatives, and donors. I’ve started trying to understand, instead, what the Democratic Party elite is up to. Collective agents are largely ignored in our obsession with individuals.

Koinospace: Where the Org Things Are

In Demons: Mediators between gods and humans, Egyptian mythology inspired me to think about entities that liaised between people and ogregores. But where do ogregores live? 

Demons: Mediators between gods and humans

The demons of ancient Egypt, I learned today, were liminal figures that mediated between gods and humans. It got me wondering about entities that liaised between people and ogregores.

Ogregore taxonomy and ethology

A question from Matt Nesselrodt got me thinking again about the natural history of ogregores. Assuming that the central goal of the Big Five tech companies is profit, Matt wondered what their secondary goals might be. And are such goals unique to each company?