A Note on Collectivist Business Models

Interesting article that, from my perspective, is more relevant to highlighting age old debates about business than "problems of poor pastoralists."

https://theconversation.com/new-business-skills-can-improve-livelihoods-among-poor-people-how-to-avoid-the-pitfalls-154752

Just because global business has been practiced using warfare and individualistic wealth accumulation models does not mean these are all encompassing models of what business is or should be.

Instead of trying to force pastoralists, or other collective sharing cultural groups, into a false dichotomy of: focus on yourself and thrive or work together and starve, efforts should be made to share the business models and principles that best align with collectivism.

Examples:

KPMG, one of the world's largest accounting firms, is. Swiss Cooperative

https://home.kpmg/ke/en/home/about/governance/structure.html

Mondragon Cooperative in Spain has a well established employee ownership structure

https://theconversation.com/the-mondragon-model-how-a-basque-cooperative-defied-spains-economic-crisis-10193

La Fageda in Spain competes with Danone and was formed by a psychiatrist seeking to find ways to ensure his patients had a gainful employment and a meaningful sense of identity + purpose

https://www.ieseinsight.com/doc.aspx?id=984&ar=3

In the US, the hotbed of individualistic wealth accumulation, there are successful employee stock ownership (ESOPs) models

https://www.nceo.org/what-is-employee-ownership

Worker participation in managerial decision-making has always been strong across Europe and Asia, we call this model labor unions and collective bargaining

https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Countries

https://apjjf.org/-John-Benson/2938/article.html

Strategic Alliances between businesses are not always set up to maximize profits.

Often times they are set up to reduce costs or to facilitate the exchange of core knowledge needed to improve market performance. When written in combative language (fend off competitive threats) the value of a strategic alliance as a mechanism for improving customer satisfaction across diverse groups and geographic locations gets completely lost.

https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/the-five-factors-of-a-strategic-alliance/

Research on business culture also recognizes that the degree of collectivism vs individualism varies across organizations and across countries 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01304/full

Hence, before telling pastoralists or any other group that they must give up their identity to put food on the table, it would be better to provide models via which their identity is the strategic asset needed for the business model to succeed. 

True capitalism emerges when everyone has an equal and affordable opportunity to enjoy their preferred cup of tea.