Education of the Deaf and General Motors

Recently, I have been doing some reading about the success and failure of businesses and the various opinions that have been offered to explain how some of our largest corporations find themselves in unexpected difficulties, sometimes to the point of collapse, while others, apparently, are thriving. The situation seems to exist across a variety of economies and in different economic sectors. In the United States there are several examples. Many major airlines have declared bankruptcy, or are on the verge of doing so, because of their inability to respond to the challenge of leaner, more inexpensive, airlines. Walmart is constantly expanding into new markets, to the detriment of existing companies unable to respond to the challenge. In countries from the United States to France to Japan governments provide subsidies to farmers to protect certain crops from cheaper foreign competition. Sometimes the problem is not cost, but overproduction. The U.S. government pays agricultural concerns money not to produce certain foods. Perhaps the best known example of current problems is General Motors. Although it is not in any present danger of bankruptcy, it recently cut several thousand jobs and announced plant closings in the United States and Canada. Among the reasons given for the problems faced by General Motors, as well as numerous corporations in North America and Western Europe, is that the highly paid workforce cannot produce products as cheaply as less well-paid, but skilled, workers in developing countries. This may be true to some extent, but it does not account for the whole picture. It has been pointed out that Toyota, for example, employs American workers in American plants to produce cars more efficiently and at less cost than the Americanowned car-makers. In fact, Toyota has announced plans to build plants in the United States at the same time that General Motors is closing theirs. This is the case even though there are several major corporations (not Toyota obviously) that are facing the same difficulties in Japan as General Motors is in North America. The argument has been made that many of the huge global conglomerates are operating under an out-dated, self-defeating management style that presumes that superior management can always anticipate and control change. In their press for stability and continuity they placed too much reliance on formal planning and have paid a heavy price for it. There is a growing belief that change cannot always be anticipated and managed, but rather that businesses will face disruptive changes that could destroy them unless successfully countered. Rapid response is more important than attempting to plan for every contingency. Business is chaotic and unforgiving, and changes cannot always be managed; they must be grasped or die. The situation also pertains to organizations outside of the business world. Hurricane Katrina exposed severe bureaucratic inefficiencies at the state and federal levels. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) exhibited both a lack of planning to anticipate the disaster and an inability to respond quickly and effectively to the unexpected crises that arose, resulting in unnecessary death and destruction. Although the education of deaf students may not face catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina, we are constantly encountering unanticipated new challenges, opportunities, and developments, and our responses have not always been effective. Several examples come to mind. In the spring of 1988 Gallaudet University erupted in protest over the selection of a hearing president and the ensuing Deaf President Now movement culminated in Gallaudet's first deaf president. …

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