Week 12 (November 30, 2020)

This week, we studied an insightful article in the Harvard Business Review, "What's a Business For?" by Charles Handy (December 2002).  First of all, virtue and integrity are important to an economy because society relies on people’s savings to spur wealth.  If virtue and integrity, or truth and trust, are lost, people will save their money in a tin can buried in their backyard and not pump it into the economy.  Lying to people and breaking their trust will cause the economy to tank.   

According to Handy, the purpose of a business is “to make a profit so that it can do something more or better [for society].”  Today, intellectual property is the basis of many businesses, or the people doing the work and not investing their money.  Yet, the people doing the work to make the business profitable are not recognized as an asset.  For example, I worked for 20 years at a hospital as a medical transcriptionist (transcribing physicians’ dictation).  To the hospital, my wages were considered a cost to the hospital, not an asset.  Several times it was said that just anyone off the street could do my job without training, which turned out to not be true.  My co-workers who coded medical charts for insurance reimbursement, were considered an asset.   

I believe the solutions proposed by Handy of “do no harm” and developing “a new vision of the purpose of business” will work.  “Do no harm,” like the Hippocratic oath, covers sustainability of our planet and our humans.  This refers to investing some profits into taking care of earth so that we have a safe, viable place to continue to conduct business and investing some profits into taking care of our humans so that they can continue to own businesses or do the work for the businesses without working themselves to death.  As noted in Handy’s article, “Profit often comes from progress.”  Another solution of Handy’s that I feel is worthwhile is “developing a new vision of the purpose of business.”  The old vision of the purpose of business was it existed to make money for its shareholders.  The new vision must include the group of people who come together to do something collectively that they cannot do separately; all in that community called a “business” should share the wealth.