re: "...whose goal would be to help members to heal from the structural flaws of society."
What did he think were the "structural flaws"?
Chris,
I might have twisted Greenleaf's words a bit. What Greenleaf wrote was "For those who participate (in Seekers Anonymous), healing, in the sense of being made whole, will come from deep involvment with creative work on the structural flaws in our society, work that has both meliorative and society-building consequences."
I take this to mean that for the healing to happen, we need to change the source of our dis-ease, those organizations with structural flaws. Greenleaf's idea for this organization was brought up in his essay "Servant Leadership in Churches", so I would say that one organization with "structural flaws" is our churches. In his book Servant Leadership, he also included essays on Servant Leadership in Business, Education, and Foundations, so I would say these are also organizations with structural flaws that contribute to our dis-ease. I think that the bottom line is that any organizations that is caught up in hierachical or bureaucratic principles are organizations in need of the creative work Greenleaf wrote about.
In his essay "Servant Responsibility in a Bureaucratic Society" Greenleaf backs this idea up when he wrote "All institutions - churches, schools, governments, businesses, hospitols, social agencies, families - all tend to become bureaucracies [...]. Because we need the good they do, we tend to overlook the harm done because they are bureaucracies." Greenleaf's definition of bureaucracy is "a system that has become narrow, rigid, and formal, depends on precedient, and lacks initiative and resourcefullness- a pretty bad state of affairs."
In the essay "The Institution as Servant" he writes about the "hierarchical principle that places one person in charge as the lone chief atop a pyramidal structure. Nearly all institutions we know about - businesses, governments, armies, churches, universities - have been organized this way for so long that it is a rare for anyone to question the assumptions that underlie the model. We see no other course than to hold one person responsible. And so the natural reaction to call for stronger leadership is to try to strengthen the control of the one person as the top. This reaction, in most cases, exacerbates rather tan alleviates the problem."
Hope this helps clarify the the source of the structural flaws.
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