In a 2006 article in Foreign Affairs, Robert Sapolsky related the story of “The Forest Troop”, a group of baboons in a national park in Kenya. A tourist lodge expanded into their territory and with that expansion came a great deal of leftover food in the garbage dump. The baboons feasted on this. The males, who grabbed the spoils each morning, were very combative and not interested in socializing. Then tuberculosis broke out, killing most of the troop's members and all of the scavenging males. The remaining population was comprised of less aggressive males and a higher ratio of females to males. Socially, there was less harassment of subordinates and greater incidents of socialization. These attributes continued even after the remaining males left the troop, as baboons apparently do, and new males arrived. Even though the new males did not necessarily share the less aggressive nature of the surviving males, they continued the less violent culture and practices. As Sapolsky puts it, “Forest Troop's low aggression/high affiliation society constitutes nothing less than a multigenerational benign culture.” In short, cultures can change. That is true of our primate cousins, the baboons, and it is true of nations such as Germany, Japan, and Sweden. And so, the question is, if baboons can do it, why can't companies?

This is not to say that human nature is fully malleable. It is not. It has biological constraints. Nor is it to equate baboons with nation-states or corporations.