Good in context

In order to recognise good in its context, we need to distinguish three perspectives on good.

Now that we know that frames influence how we perceive and communicate about reality (see post series “Three frames“) it might be a good idea to look at how strongly these frames are represented on different levels of abstraction.

Three perspectives

The individual perspective is the perspective of individual people, citizens or employees, an individual manager or an individual (retail) client or prospect. On this level, we are expected to not get fired or reprimanded (comply frame), to feel good about ourselves and be valuable to our environment (be good frame) and also to be successful, make money and earn promotion (be successful frame). The individual employee is subject to expectations from the different frames that are often conflicting or hard to reconcile.

When a group of individual employees organise themselves in a team, we move towards the organisation perspective. This is the level of the organisation, whether it is the company an employee is working for or one of its (corporate) clients. But also competing organisations or regulators supervising the company fit in this perspective. On this level organisations are expected to avoid fines or extra supervision (comply frame), to have integrity and fulfil a role in society (be good frame) and of course to make a profit (be successful frame).

Zooming out further, we reach the society perspective where political debate takes place about what would be good for society. This is the level where public opinion is formed and debated, for example in the media. Expectations on this level are about things like preventing crime (comply frame), avoiding harm (be good frame) and stimulating competition and a strong economy (be successful frame). In its most holistic form this perspective is about what is good for humanity.

To understand where good needs most attention, it will be worth distinguishing these three perspectives in more detail, especially in relation to the three frames. Later on, we will explore for all three how good can be under pressure and why that can be problematic.

Learn more by reading my next post about stakeholder ecosystems.


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