Jaap de Winter wrote an interesting article on dehumanisation of the large corporation, supported by digitalisation, “Modern digital technologies, considering people only as bundles of data that can be exploited, increase dehumanisation“. What he describes is also coming to the SME’s, so read and shiver.

The abstract on SSRN:

The large corporation has become dehumanised, through a combination of developments like the one-sided shareholder value focus in the modern theory of the firm, capital markets that see companies as balance sheets, efficiency driven management practices that see humans as production tools, excessive regulation and control and failing remuneration sytems. Modern digital technologies, considering people only as bundles of data that can be exploited, increase dehumanisation. To re-humanise the corporation we need to reorient the purpose of the corporation, develop humane management practices, invent and improve corporate legal forms and first of all rediscover what it is to be human in our times.