I don't think it does. I think we know how to solve almost all of the "big company problems", probably all of them. But the solution ultimately boils down to time and money. We know how to make quality products. We know how to treat employees fairly. We know how to communicate at large scale. But none of this comes for free.
What humanity doesn't know how to do is to solve those problems while remaining profit optimal. That's something that is in many cases impossible, because it would require using resources to benefit your customers or employees instead of taking it as profit. That's the edge of project management - how much good guy stuff can we do given that we may under no circumstances drift too far away from making as much money as possible?
This is somewhat tautological. Anything that has a net cost, and you say that solving big company problems has a cost, and I agree, by definition is not profit-optimal.
These problems only seem insoluble as long as you keep the mindset that a company must pursue profit above all else. Put that aside, and you'll see that actually there are many solutions.
I'm trying. But I don't see the solutions.
It should not be forgotten that we allow businesses to exist in order to make the lives of citizens better.
Well no, I don't agree with that. Business exist because of human rights.
Businesses do not exist to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few jackasses who stumbled into the right combination of nepotism, assholery and bootlicking to make it to the top.
I mean... some of them do.
One could as easily say that the idea that money is what really matters over customers or the environment as pure nonsense. It's entirely arbitrary, and mostly cultural. It is this way because you were taught that it's this way.
But it doesn't need to be. Just because that's the way businesses are now, doesn't mean that's the only way they can ever be.
I agree that the current state of affairs is not the only way it can ever be. I think that we will come up with a better way, but I don't know that we have that better way now. Non-profits don't seem to be a better way. Mid-sized companies seem to offer a better way, because many of them are able to maintain focus on the mission, but I don't know how you keep them from growing too far without doing some really arbitrary heavy handed nonsense that will have unintended consequences.
I agree that we know how to communicate effectively, and I agree that we know how to treat employees well. But I'm not at all convinced that we know what the right recipe is for establishing a conscientious large business.
I'll give you a hypothetical that I pull out of a hat and is in no way based on a very real, very specific global medical company that I have intimate knowledge of. Let's say that your company has a mission to provide excellent customer care. And let's say that you have some kind of research project for a device that will save lives. But let's say that this device will make a lot less profit than, for example, another research project that won't save any lives at all but rather provides the same level of care but harvests valuable data that can be sold off. And let's say that you have limited funds and must choose which to fund.
How do you go about structuring your global organization so that the less profitable item gets made? I don't know the answer to this. Every corporate structure I've ever seen would go for the latter, at least when it comes to large-sized corps. Smaller ones might have a single, or small number, of individuals that still remember why they got into this in the first place and are willing to say profits be damned we're going to save some lives. When you get to large scale organizations, because of the way the reporting structures work, and the way each level oversees the levels below them, the information just doesn't convey and the wrong choice gets made.
Now I speak in absolutes when it's not really the case. I've seen CEOs refuse more profitable endeavors for the sake of the mission. But far more often I've seen the corporate org design do its job and squash the good project because of what people would call "bean counters" but is actually just an easily identifiable and communicable objective measure - money. Sometimes even when the CEO is saying it publicly the people internally are doing the exact opposite - because the people below the CEO either don't believe it or report to someone who doesn't. I don't see a way out at the moment.
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