[Ailist] What is the Life Force (Vital energy/ Prana)of Business?

[Roger Davies]

Hi Lionel, 

I'd recommend EF Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' with regard to your
question also. My original e-mail contained more explanation but got very
long so this is an abridged version.

If one looks at business as being wholly driven by money then it is doomed
to failure. If it is driven by money it will seek only to maximize profit by
maximizing productivity. Whichever route one takes to that fewer people
within the more expensive wage nations will become involved in
manufacturing. As agriculture and manufacturing are the only sectors that
generate real cash everyone else is essentially paid for by their
activities. So fewer and fewer people work to support an ever increasing
dependant population. 'Progress' in that direction is driven by third party
share ownership (ownership by people not involved in the business on a day
to day basis). Their motive is purely return on capital, wholly money
driven. Money flows to where it is MOST CRAVED. 

Now consider business as fulfilling a social need. It does so by allowing
the trading of necessary and specialist skills. We do that in more ways than
just using money but money is the lifeblood of this trading in a business
sense. In this case though the business is focused on keeping money flowing
to where it is MOST NEEDED. Such a business environment would look very
different to the one we have today and would be demonstrating a large amount
of compassion rather than competition. For it to work there would be almost
exclusively employee/local community ownership and no third party stock
ownership (and no stock market!). Money is not the life force in this case
it is only a necessary component of the system. The life force is really the
need to share skills and knowledge.

It's worth considering how this also parallels our notions of power and
strength. In current business monetary wealth is power as it enables those
who have it to control those who need it. In the second case the community
has power but over what? Only over its own decisions and longevity. The
question can be re-framed to 'Does an organization exist as a means for a
few to distribute control over the many or for the whole to exchange power
within itself'? Which model works best?

Roger



-----Original Message-----
From: ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu
[mailto:ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Lionel Boxer
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 1:42 PM
To: ailist at lists.business.utah.edu; mail at sachinchavan.com
Subject: Re: [Ailist] What is the Life Force (Vital energy/ Prana)of
Business?

Money is the life force of business.  One may argue this, but if you dig
deeply, if it is anything other than money then the organisation is
something other than a business, which is perhaps directs to a more
important question.  That is, what should a business be for it to best serve
humanity and the ecology, which is what John Elkington's triple bottom line
/ sustainability is all about.

I explored this a bit without the aid of AI in my PhD using another social
constructionist theory, Positioning Theory.  See http://intergon.net/phd

Triple bottom line is one thing, but traditional business is about money.
However, it appears that everything in business is reduced to money.  Even
when we start dealing with the ecology, we reduce it to cabon trading, which
in my opinion is a severe cop-out.

Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256 Associate of RMIT
University - lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au Graduate School of Business my
"Assessment of Quality Systems with Positioning Theory" 
now in a googe book - see link at http://intergon.net
>>> "Sachin Chavan" <mail at sachinchavan.com> 10/11/09 2:37 AM >>>
Money/profits? It is more akin to blood of business (transfer mechanism).
Products and services? But they change. Employees and other stakeholders?
They sound like organs/parts. What makes all these alive?
Mission/purpose? It is closer to its Dharma.
 
So then, what is the Prana (life force) of business? What keeps it going?
What heals it? What enriches it?
? ? 
Regards,
Sachin
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