Sean’s use of “rational operator” is not meant to be jargon or unusual, he just meant a normal rational person. Economists love rational human beings… I should know, I’m one. But have I ever met a rational human being? Different question.

I am an avid reader of your blog, the most interesting part apart from your content is the kind of Jargon and complex sentences i find in your blog and comments of the readers…

Sample the Sean’s sentence

” Call it the (large) enterprise tragedy of the commons: clearly all companies need customers to survive, but in sufficiently large/established companies, most employees ‘in the middle’ can safely assume that inertia, reputation, market position, mean that the ‘installed’ base of customers exists and is ‘captured’, so the rational operator asks the ‘Who stands to gain’ question framed in such a way that the answer is ‘me’, ‘my team’ or possibly ‘my department/division’… Of course this is unsustainable over time but that timeline is usually safely longer than the employee’s horizon.”

your blog

“EDI and Edifact and SITPRO, discussing the evolution of automation of trade documents.”

half the time i am googling and using wikipedia, but somethings still remain, like the “rational operator” in Sean’s sentence.

I understand i am ignorant in many ways, but what is the way out?

Your links to wikipedia are a great help for a start.

Well yes. Obviously. But clearly in most large organizations – except for the people at the very top, and hopefully some of the people on the ‘front line’ (ie dealing directly and constantly with said customers) – the answer is very rarely “the customer”. Call it the (large) enterprise tragedy of the commons: clearly all companies need customers to survive, but in sufficiently large/established companies, most employees ‘in the middle’ can safely assume that inertia, reputation, market position, mean that the ‘installed’ base of customers exists and is ‘captured’, so the rational operator asks the ‘Who stands to gain’ question framed in such a way that the answer is ‘me’, ‘my team’ or possibly ‘my department/division’… Of course this is unsustainable over time but that timeline is usually safely longer than the employee’s horizon. Ironically, even when decline sets in, there is a better than 50/50 chance that this behavior accelerates as the employees decide whether or not it is better to ‘get what you can while you can’ (looting) rather than ‘get back to basics’ (serving their customers.) Taking the ‘looting’ fork generally happens if they think the company’s structure and culture is irredeemably corrupted. Worse there is not alot even a smart and motivated CEO can do to fix this. Giant corporations imo are becoming analogous to the super-fauna of old – as the environment changes they are impossibly configured to adapt and at the same time risk collapsing under their own massive weight that their ’skeletal structure’ can no longer support. And the rodents survive and prosper… Ah thank goodness for creative destruction (otherwise we really would be doomed!)