What is 'Sharkey's Law' where an organization designed to solve a specific problem actually prolongs that problem?
`` Sharkey's Law '' is a phenomenon in which an organization created to solve a specific problem begins to create problems in order to maintain its raison d'être, obstructs the solutions of other organizations, and This is a law that if you don't migrate when a good solution appears, you end up prolonging the problem that should have been solved.
The Shirky Principle: Institutions Try to Preserve the Problem to Which They Are the Solution – Effectiviology
When a problem occurs, if you gather people or set up an organization to solve the problem, the purpose of the existence of the people you gathered and the organization you created will be lost when the problem is solved. For this reason, the people who brought it together and the organizations that created it sometimes move in the direction of maintaining the problem, putting their own raison d'être on the line.
For example, companies that handle tax procedures originally exist to make difficult tax procedures easier, but in order to strengthen their raison d'être, they sometimes lobby the government to make tax procedures more difficult. there is.
Such examples have been observed in various organizations, and many examples were mentioned in
◆ Cobra effect
When the British ruled India, they implemented a policy of ``paying a bounty for the carcasses of cobras'' as a countermeasure against cobras, which were poisonous snakes. At the beginning of the policy, citizens hunted wild cobras and received rewards, but some citizens started breeding cobras for commercial purposes, and the number of cobras actually increased. About.
When the authorities froze the policy, which no longer made sense, citizens who had been breeding cobras stopped keeping them and released them into the wild, resulting in an increase in the number of cobras in the wild compared to before the policy was introduced.
A similar incident occurred in Hanoi, Vietnam, which was under French colonial rule in 1902. In an effort to reduce the rat population, French authorities have decided to offer a bounty to those who submit rat parts as proof of rat hunting. However, the citizens cut off the rats' tails as proof that they had caught them, and instead of exterminating them, they let the rats escape in an attempt to breed them.
◆ Non-profit organization
One person who has spent a career working in nonprofit organizations and NGOs commented, ``This phenomenon seems uncomfortably true.'' For many nonprofits, the temptation to become a permanent solution to the problem is so strong that a situation can arise where support for things like 'anti-homelessness' is completely gobbled up by large nonprofits. .
◆ Physicist who came up with a revolutionary solution
A physicist working for a medium-sized IT company was trying to solve a technical research-level problem with 50 people when he discovered a simple and effective solution. The physicist went to report to the manager, thinking that everyone would be happy, but he started having trouble with the manager and was subsequently fired.
◆ Tips for bringing about effective change in large organizations
The people who most strongly resist change are those who have no idea what their jobs will look like after the change. These people perceive change as an existential risk to their jobs, so they will do everything they can to thwart change.
◆ Dinosaur fossils
Britain used to buy dinosaur fossils from China. However, since transactions were conducted on a pay-by-piece basis, it was far more profitable to crush and divide specimens in advance.
In addition, when dolphins were trained by giving fish as a reward for collecting plastic garbage, there was a case where the dolphins started tearing the plastic garbage into small pieces in order to receive more fish.
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in Note, Posted by log1d_ts