Being at home today, I listened to Radio 4. My line-up included Shop Talk, to which you can listen by following the link.
The subject matter was Corporate Longevity - does it matter and what is the key to achieving it?
The research presented was that companies that achieve longevity do so by seeing themselves as part of a community, and by seeing profits as oxygen - essential for survival but not the reason for survival.
When I was doing my professional training I had to write an essay about whether the main objective of a business is profit. My Management Accounting lecturer stated his view that the main objective of most businesses is a quiet life.
I am still to be convinced.
As a Social Democrat and a Trade Unionist I strongly oppose the view of profit at all costs. As human beings we live in a world where decisions cannot be - mustn't be - based entirely on the bottom line.
We live in a world inhabited by people - a world of amazing but delicate natural beauty. As human beings we have a soul - however we describe it according to our belief system, or none.
But a company is not the same as a human being.
A company includes humans, but it has a dynamic which is not a human dynamic.
The conclusion I drew from this programme, which is the same that I drew twelve years ago in the essay I wrote is that ultimately every for-profit organisation has to have profit as its main impetus.
The people running the business, consciously or sub-consciously, decide whether they want a short-term massive profit or a "guaranteed" long-term modest profit.
In general, the firms that achieve the former do so by exploiting their workers and their environment; those that opt for the latter are more in tune with the environment, and the people who are stakeholders in the firm.
The history of business is that those who behave with human characteristics survive. The future seems to indicate that the ruthless, profit-at-all-costs are gaining a supremacy.
