What's A Business For? -Charles Handy

 11/30/2022

   

    This week I learned about becoming a change-maker.  In order to become a change-maker We must first ask the questions: What changes need to be made?  Where do they need to be made?  How can I become a contributor to the change?

    One problematic issue that needs drastic change worldwide is Poverty.  I personally believe poverty could be resolved if "we" as a people, would resolve issues surrounding it.  One such issue was addressed in Charles Handy's review, "What's a Business For"?

    Handy points out the importance of integrity, virtue, and honesty in business; three concepts that are missing from many corporate and successful companies.  The issue becomes vital to the economy because "businesses have no purpose other than themselves" according to Handy.  Corporations become greedy and will lie, cheat, and treat employees as property rather than assets.  This inhumane rhetoric is what crashes economies and creates more widespread poverty.  Poverty leads to hunger, disease, and crime.  The world becomes controlled by what the LDS know as the "Pride Cycle".

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        Handy offers a solution which is to view employees as "assets", treat them with integrity, and build a community with a purpose, which has members who have rights, not property to be owned and governed by company policies and law.  Members should be valued.  Assets are to be cherished not minimized or seen as costs.

        Another perspective was given by David Packard.  He stated that while companies are driven by money, there is a much deeper purpose.  The conclusion he came to is "a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately, which contributes to society".

    My thoughts are that both of these men are on to something huge!  If more companies would heed this advice and make the changes necessary to create a culture of integrity, virtue, and a community where everyone matters, the war on poverty could essentially end.

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