The current thinking on “the purpose of business” is “to
make money or to increase shareholder value”. This belief came about during
a period in history when providers of capital were by far the most important
stakeholder group to large enterprises that needed a continuing source of capital
to finance their growth. In essence, these enterprises were just responding
to the needs of one stakeholder group over the needs of others.
Today, due to certain trends, other stakeholder groups,
such as customers, employees, suppliers, local communities and the larger community,
are becoming as important as providers of capital, and in some cases, even more
important.
Maybe even more important, there has been a shift from
the factory worker to the knowledge worker as being keys to organizational success.
Money alone, or just having a job, is not sufficient incentive for the creativity,
commitment, and team-work required in today’s environment.
This shift in relative importance of stakeholder groups
requires rethinking our application of capitalism in the business community.
In a shrinking and more interdependent world, we need to develop new tools and
methodologies for business leaders to use in harnessing the power and potential
good of their organizations in ways that will assure their survival as well
as ours.
Unlike capitalism, Purposeful Behavior addresses a more
fundamental concern of organizations, especially for-profit organizations, to
use its resources to maximize value to all its stakeholders.
This new way of thinking needs to be taught in our Business
Schools and eventually throughout our entire educational system. Curriculums
have to be developed and new methodologies designed for transforming current
organizational behavior.
Our foundation will focus in three areas:
Business School Curriculum- we will develop training materials to be used at the business school level, especially for human resource, organization development and strategic planning disciplines.
Mainstream awareness – we will encourage adoption of this new concept into mainstream thinking by publishing books and articles geared to the educated public.
Consultative materials – we will develop methodologies
and techniques that can be used by consultants in the field of organizational
and human resource development and strategic planning to expedite acceptance
of this new approach in the business community.