GLO and Corporatism

[SigEpYoda]

Is it me, or more and more fraternities are turning itself from a social organization to an organization that resemble corporate America. What I mean is that in my organization, our exec board looks like an exec board of a major corporation. We have a president and five vice president. Plus numerous chairmanship that would make IBM proud. This is also a recent phenom, bout 5 or 6 yrs ago. In the past, we had a Pres, VP, Sec, Tres, and your chairs. More simple.
Maybe it's just me, but I wonder if anybody is also seeing their respective organizations moving toward corporation style of exec board. By the way, I'm quite happy, it trains the young lads the ways of running a company.

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Try Not . . . Do

[James]

I agree, the prevailing trend seems to be professionalism. Different organization of officers, a better leadership philosophy (altough the training realy hasn't caught up yet), and a higher degree of accountability has contributed to a more corporate style chapter. Which is seen in differing degrees from campus to campus.

The first cause may have been fiscal responsiblity. As GLOs have become more expensive and more money conscious, so has the movement towards professionalism grown.

In my Fraternity a Risk Managment violation will get you investigated, but 60 days past due and you are automatically suspended. I have also seen more members expelled from the general Fraternitity for financial delinquency than any other reason.

[Alumnus who cares]

My fraternity has a similar "corporate" structure--the Exec board is made up of the President and 4 VP's. It's kind of cool because each VP has several chairmen (social chair, rush chair, Greek relations chair) who report to him, and you can see how people "climb up the corporate ladder." For example, if someone is currently rush chairman, you know that he is in line to become VP of Membership, and the social chairmen have a good chance to become VP of Social Programs, etc. Of course, in our organizations, you get elected to these higher positions rather than promoted, which is also good...gotta have some democracy.

Another thing I like seeing is younger members serving as VP's. I don't know if other fraternities have young VP's, or if it's pretty much all juniors and seniors. For years, we have almost always had 1 or 2 sophomores serving on our Exec board, which is good because they become quality leaders of our house at a young age.