Like I think they should maximise profits and care about other things too like, making a great product/service, being a great place to work for employees.
I’m reminded of the discussion at the end of Goldratt’s It’s Not Luck where they are discussing the goals of a business. Here is a excerpt:
His expression shows that he doesn’t agree yet. No wonder, for a long time we thought that business and social values were almost contradictory. They were. Not anymore.
To help him quickly digest it, I say, “Let me review what we have agreed on. We agreed that we should, ‘Make money now as well as in the future,’ ‘Provide a secure and satisfying environment for employees now as well as in the future,’ and ‘Provide satisfaction to the market now as well as in the future.’ The first one represents the traditional view of people who own companies. The second is the traditional view of the unions, the employees’ representatives. And the third expresses the message that all new management methods are zealously advocating. We, as top managers, must make sure that our companies provide all of them.”
“Easy to say,” Granby sighs. “The problem is that so often there are conflicts between them.”
“No, there aren’t,” I say. “There are modes of operations that apparently conflict with one of them. These same modes in the long run conflict with all of them.”
“What you are telling us,” Jim is trying hard to digest, “is that we have to realize that there is no conflict between them. That they don’t contradict but in fact supplement each other.”
“Precisely.”
“Alex is probably right,” Brandon joins me. “As people who believe in making money as the goal we are also awakened to the fact that the other two entities are absolutely necessary conditions for achieving our goal.”
“The same awakening is happening in the other camps,” I add. “Show me a union leader who believes that there is job security in a company that constantly loses money. Show me a quality zealot who thinks that a company can provide good service to the market while constantly losing money.”