A Quote by Henry Ford II
In seeking to serve social needs because it makes good business sense to do so, a corporation is doing what it knows how to do best.
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The best way for business to move out of the Hall of Shame is to demonstrate a commitment to social causes. This also makes business sense. A focus on solving social problems has motivational benefits in lean economic times.
Doing business is all about providing a good product or service to your customers. A good businessman is he who knows that what is successful today may not be so tomorrow. Technology changes so fast, and so do people's needs and wants. That's why it would do well for a businessman to know how to adapt to change. He must constantly reinvent the business, or it won't last.
The evidence seems clear that those business which actively serve their many constitutencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also, over the long run, serve their shareholders best. Companies do, infact, do well by doing good.
The corporation is the "master", the employee is the "servant". Because the corporation owns the means of production without which the employee could not make a living, the employee needs the corporation more than vice versa.
Phones were created as social tools. Smartphones are especially good at being social, integrating text, voice, video and images in an endless number of apps that can serve a user's needs, and all without the need for a web-based social network.
It makes no sense to talk of the social obligations of the corporation without reference to its economic obligations. The two are intertwined.
A business does not start up because it needs to provide jobs for a community. That's not why it happens. It's another example of how woefully inept our economic education is. The left would have you believe that a corporation exists for health care.
If you were a corporation needing financial services, and I can give you something better, faster, and cheaper across 12 products as opposed to eight, that's business. I'm doing it because I'm serving you; I'm not doing it because I want to be universal.
When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.
How do I think of you? As someone I want to be with. As someone as young as me, but "older," if that makes sense. As someone I like to look at, not just because you're good to look at, but because just looking at you makes me smile and feel happier. As someone who knows her mind and who I envy for that. As someone who is strong in herself without seeming to need anyone else to help her. As someone who makes me thinks and unsettles me in a way that makes me feel more alive.
The fears you do not face become your walls. Most people in business, and in their personal lives, design everything so they can avoid doing what makes them feel uncomfortable. Yet any good business person knows we are not only paid to work, but also we are paid to be scared.
I work with wonderful people who support me. And, my beliefs are that the business needs to serve the family rather than the family serve the business.
I found an approach to investing that made enormous sense to me: rigorously analyzing a company's fundamentals, understanding exactly how it makes money, developing a view on the business's future prospects, and deciding if it's a good business.
No doubt exists that rent seeking in general leads to serious inefficiencies in this direct sense, but its indirect damage is even worse. Drawing the bulk of intelligent and energetic people in society into activity that has no social product, or may have a negative social product, is more important in explaining the stagnation of these societies than the direct social cost of the rent seeking.
Whenever you're in a chaotic environment, there are some of the best opportunities. Nobody knows where the music business is going, but I know one thing: it's going to be about fan-artist relationships and how you monetize that. The business isn't going to turn around the way we're doing it now.
As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.
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