ABSTRACT
Commodities and market relations become the fetishistic expression of direct human relations that themselves become lost. Consumerism then becomes a central and necessary organising principle in a world of commodities. The relatedness of each consumer–provider pair seems, at first sight, to centre on rational economic exchange and informed customer service. The values of consumerism are linked to a view of the independent individual rather than the community. The customer-producer paradigm has restructured work, changed work practices, shifted authority for production to the consumer and, most significantly, re-shaped the notion of self within organisations. The organisation is a collectivity, created through a process of social agreements, both consciously formulated and unconsciously influenced. The twentieth century gradually grew away from institutionalised bureacracy, with its social assumptions of dependency, towards an organisational form of individualism.
