I think given that companies are required by law to only care about corporate profits and shareholder value, it's more like autism spectrum than anything else. It's not so much that they're actively evil, but that because of their structure, they just don't get normal behaviors. Even when doing the right things, they do it for the wrong reasons, or do so in ways that the rest of us find weird or creepy. Starbucks wanted a race conversation and went about starting said conversation with forced messages on plastic cups. A psychopath would understand human relations well enough to not do that because it's annoying and won't start the conversation. McDonald's thought nothing of telling a burger flipper to tip his pool boy and au pair, something most normal people would find insulting because people who get food stamps don't have pools or pool boys. But since they're hyper focused on profit, and incapable of understanding human emotions, they end up screwing this up all the time.
Those are pretty funny fringe examples, but to be honest the majority of the time corporate actions are intentionally and methodically manipulative. Entire billion dollar industries exist around studying and implementing the most effective tools of manipulation.
This is where Facebook came from after all, mapping the most intimate and human thing of all - interpersonal relationships - in order to leverage them as a tool in marketing, among other things.
I think it's far more intentional and malevolent than what the autism analogy implies. It's not that they "don't get it" - quite the opposite. They get it, have turned it into a science, and have decided to exploit it for their own ends.
I dunno, I still see it as not getting it. Most of them seem shocked that something they saw as a good thing is seen by others as evil. Maybe it depends on the firm, but there are enough examples of backtracking on programs and apologies that at least some companies are more like ASD than psychopathy.
Or http://autism.about.com/od/SymptomsofAutism/bb/Checklist-Of-Autism-Symptoms.htm. Autism.
I think given that companies are required by law to only care about corporate profits and shareholder value, it's more like autism spectrum than anything else. It's not so much that they're actively evil, but that because of their structure, they just don't get normal behaviors. Even when doing the right things, they do it for the wrong reasons, or do so in ways that the rest of us find weird or creepy. Starbucks wanted a race conversation and went about starting said conversation with forced messages on plastic cups. A psychopath would understand human relations well enough to not do that because it's annoying and won't start the conversation. McDonald's thought nothing of telling a burger flipper to tip his pool boy and au pair, something most normal people would find insulting because people who get food stamps don't have pools or pool boys. But since they're hyper focused on profit, and incapable of understanding human emotions, they end up screwing this up all the time.
Those are pretty funny fringe examples, but to be honest the majority of the time corporate actions are intentionally and methodically manipulative. Entire billion dollar industries exist around studying and implementing the most effective tools of manipulation.
This is where Facebook came from after all, mapping the most intimate and human thing of all - interpersonal relationships - in order to leverage them as a tool in marketing, among other things.
I think it's far more intentional and malevolent than what the autism analogy implies. It's not that they "don't get it" - quite the opposite. They get it, have turned it into a science, and have decided to exploit it for their own ends.
I dunno, I still see it as not getting it. Most of them seem shocked that something they saw as a good thing is seen by others as evil. Maybe it depends on the firm, but there are enough examples of backtracking on programs and apologies that at least some companies are more like ASD than psychopathy.