Recently I've had some healthy debates with my consultant friends. One works for McKinsey & Company, one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world and the top employer of new MBA graduates since 1996. The other works for Deloitte, the largest private professional services organization in the world, employing 170,000 people in 140 countries. Heavy hitters.I've been arguing with them about the evils of having profit-maximization as the ultimate goal of a business. They say profit-maximization is good and has many of benefits to society.
So far our highly intellectual debates have gone like this:
Me: You're wrong.
Them: I'm right.
Me: I'm right and you're stupid.
Them: You're wrong and I'm a genius so listen to me. Plus I'm very good looking.
Just kidding (except for the good looking part, that is true. In fact, one of them is single and very eligible, so if you're interested...) Seriously though, here are some of the arguments so far.
Pro-profit-maximization:
- good businesses operate with high moral standards with much honesty and integrity
- most of the time there is no conflict between glorifying God and maximizing shareholder value
- good businesses maximize profits, serve customers, and treat employees well at the same time
- harming people (customers, employees, innocent bystanders) actually hurts the profitability of the company, so it will prevent a company from doing these things
Anti-profit-maximization:
- when there is a conflict between maximizing profits and serving people, profits always wins, and people can get hurt (there is too much evidence to support this)
- maximizing profits places your own concerns above the concerns of others (loving yourself more than others), and that does not honour God
- all businesses and corporations have mission statements that say they want to serve their customers with excellence, but actually their mission statement is to maximize profits, so really they are lying and we can't really trust them
I agree that many businesses operate with high levels of integrity, that they do much good in the world through offering valuable products and services, provide many people with jobs, that they have done much in helping to minimize harm done to the environment, and have given a large portion of their profits to great social programs in their communities. Lots and lots of good that is done. And surely all these good things far outweigh the evil that is done along the way. The aggregate sum is positive, and that is good.
Should the Christian response be rather than reject the current dominant way of doing business, to engage in it and do our best to maximize the good and minimize the evil? If Christians were in the highest levels of leadership in businesses, then they would be able to maintain the highest levels of integrity and prevent people and the environment from being hurt by the every day operations of businesses. If Christians were to reject the current way of doing business, then there would be less people of integrity doing business which would probably lead to more evils done by businesses.
Do you think Christians in business should engage or disengage from today's dominant way of doing business (profit-maximization)?
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