Business as Mission: A Three-fold Mandate
by Mats Tunehag
Business is more than making money, at least it should be. According to the “father of capitalism” Adam Smith, businesses exist to serve the general welfare.
The computer pioneer Dave Packard said: ”Many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. People get together and exist as a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately – they make a contribution to society.”
In the last few years we have been able to witness the effects of a global economic crisis. Mahatma Gandhi’s list of seven deadly social sins seems to be an accurate diagnosis for some of the causes of this crisis. It has been too much…
- politics without principle
- wealth without work
- commerce without morality
- pleasure without conscience
- education without character
- science without humanity
- worship without sacrifice