Page 200 - What’s A Business For

I recently read a Harvard Business Review article by Charles Handy, the article was titled “what’s a business for”.

In the article Charles talks about capitalism, and how it will continue to been seen as a rich man’s game, and here are my thoughts

I want to start off by saying that I believe, it’s naïve to think that any system is completely perfect or imperfect. Yes you have bad capitalists, but you can also have good capitalists. That is why when living in a capitalistic environment integrity, and virtue become vital to the economy. This is because when a capitalist that doesn’t care about the environment, it then gives birth to a virtuous capitalist that does care about the environment, or when a capitalist doesn’t care about the country he lives in, it gives birth to a capitalist that has a lot of inetgrity and does care about his country, and the chain goes on, and on like that in almost every industry, or field. 

Charles Handy goes on to imply that the objective of every business out there is to make a profit, and the way they justify that profit is by making something in larger quantities, or by making something better. Although Charles may not be wrong about a company’s objective being becoming profitable, it’s a bit of a bold statement to imply that all companies use their increased profits as an excuse to bring you more things, as a way of only making more money off of you, and not as a way to help or improve your way of life etc.

I do however believe with two points that were brought up by Charles Handy in the article. I believe in the part when he says that we can remedy the flaws of capitalism (bad capitalism), and still retain the energy created by the old model of capitalism. 

And, I believe with the point he makes about doing the same thing that charitable organizations do, which would be to measure success in terms of outcomes for others as well as for ourselves. One only need to thing about the environmental impact of Tesla to believe in measuring success in terms of outcomes for others, as well as, themselves.

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