The Hopeful Organization

This chapter provides some examples of ‘mechanisms of hope’ that prevent people from relinquishing their ideals — that keep them hopeful and encourage them to continue reforming even when they experience great difficulty in implementing their reforms. Mechanisms of hope are necessary ingredients in a world in which we are expected to believe in lofty ideas, in a world in which practical experience is not allowed to play an overly important role in forming our ideas, and where we are able to try repeatedly to reform our practice to conform with these ideas, even if such reforms constantly fail. In short, hope is a fundamental, cultural factor in explaining the production and reproduction of reform.

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