Among the email reactions I personally received, one was especially thought-provoking. From Greg Waldron, it commented on a side issue to the column, the unfairness of stereotyping the corporate world as "bad guys" and non-profits as on the side of the angels. Here’s what Greg said, via an email to Anne:

"Perhaps you could offer your husband a good-natured query along these lines: has our language evolved (while I wasn’t listening) to have �corporate’ become a synonym for �heartless’ and �non-profit’ become a synonym for �free from all sin’? As a �corporate’ fellow myself, it seems to me that the �non-profits’ are the ones who take the greatest drubbing on the editorial pages this week."

A good point, Greg, and an interesting one. With gratitude, let me start a response with the last words of your question, "free from all sin."

A first comment is that vice, like virtue, dwells, not in organizations, but in humans. An organization, whatever its kind, is in itself a mindless, will-less structure created by humans to produce a particular effect. As such, it’s somewhat like a machine. But since organizations (like machines) are controlled by humans, no organization is safe from vice. Humans can misdirect organizations _ of any sort _ down the slippery slope, just as readily as they can misuse a machine’s capacity and wreck it in the process.

The basic distinction between a well-run non-profit and a well-run corporation, then, doesn’t lie in the former being good guys and the latter bad guys. The real difference between them is morally neutral. It lies in the goal of each, and the way that goal determines which way the management "faces."

In a good, efficient corporation, management faces towards the stockholders, since the goal is to produce a profit for them. From that perspective, the goods or services that are produced (and the clients that consume them) are basically means to the profit-making. And further, the employees that produce the goods or services are means to the profit-making, too. Good morale among them is not primarily a moral concern for management, but a practical one. Happy workers are better producers, and that results in higher profits for the stockholders.

There is no reason to defend or apologize for anything in that description of a good corporation. If evil infects one, it’s normally because of the managers’ moral blindness. If, for instance, the produced goods are shoddy, the services inferior, the management pays itself outrageous salaries or even rakes off money that should go to workers’ pay or to the stockholders, look for the culprits at the very top. In fact, we’ve recently seen chief executive officers and chief financial officers ending up in court and, gratifyingly, in jail.

But here’s an important note. Corporate culture develops, in part, because of hard-ball competition among corporations for the same consumers. Self-preservation will make corporate managers guard their secrets against theft or sabotage. (Interestingly, sometimes a managing board will confront perceived outside threat by hostile take-over_a bit like the behavior of that other flawed but useful human organization, the nation.)

Corporate management is most touchy about its secrets when it has to fire people who have had access to sensitive processes or formulae. That’s why business programs teach how to spring the firing on the individuals, and then hustle them out of the work environs within hours, even as locks are changed and computer access is blocked. [an error occurred while processing this directive]