The Triumph of Big Business‐think

This paper suggests that the basic assumptions and language of big business have largely taken over our discourse about how we live our lives and conduct our public affairs. So complete is this takeover that most people, including the current generation of government ministers, are largely unaware it has taken place at all. Important general ideas such as leadership, judgement and even public service have taken on new and opaque meanings as a result of this. But there are good ‘systems thinking’ ideas to be borrowed from big business. Our problem is that the ideas the public service does borrow from the private sector are almost invariably those that are the most inappropriate and unhelpful.