The problem with the pursuit of the almighty dollar is you end up alienating your country men and selling out your product to the lowest bidder. Americans are the largest consumer of goods in the world. If we can no longer make money, we cannot buy. If we cannot buy, your company cannot make as much money as they could if we could buy. At this trend the current clusterf%^k we call our economy will auto-cannibalize and smarter people will take it over. This is what American businesses are shooting for.

Can you give us a few examples of what companies might do to become value based?

Treating people like human beings instead of a productivity statistic for starters.

Well, it seems to be working for Google, Starbucks, Whole Foods Market, Publix Supermarkets, FedEx, Yahoo!, and many many more.

I guess you guys prefer the old school business model of GM, Ford, Circuit City, AIG, and oh yea, Fannie and Freddie. Yea that has been working REALLY well.

Geesh.

Robert E. Lee’s touchy-feely "value-based business" sounds, frankly, like a child’s pop-up book.

The bottom line, in this case, is literally the bottom line.

If you can’t make a profit, you can’t run a business. If you make ENOUGH profit, you can fool around with touchy feely stuff. But if you DON’T make enough profit, you are just out of business.

If you run out of profit trying to DO the "touchy-feely" stuff then you’ve done yourself and your employees a disservice since the FUNDAMENTAL value a business offers is PROFIT, which includes the ability to hire employees.

If you want to organize company picnics and company dances to make people feel better about working there, by all means do so, but it better not interfere with productivity. Not unless one of your “values” is downsizing the company.

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There are many businesses that are employee owned. I think one of the problems in big business today is the common stock, stockholder as owner, business disconnect.

Jodyneel,
I disagree with the concept of, "maximizing profit maximizes social welfare." Therefore, I disagree with your conclusion that, "a value-based business is suboptimal socially and less desirable than a profit-maximizing business model."

I’ll try the shorter version then.

All else being equal, maximizing profit maximizes social welfare. You say a value-based business does not maximize profit. Therefore, a value-based business is suboptimal socially and less desirable than a profit-maximizing business model.

jodyneel’s last blog post..Tech still controls its own destiny?!?

There are lots of socially conscious financial vehicles like mutual funds out there, and they don’t generally do as well for a stockholder as less friendly and more money oriented ones.

Like a Kincaid  greeting card. You can sell those cards for a bit of money, but you can’t run a business on them, unless you are, in fact, Thomas Kincaid.

The rest of it is just a game you play with yourself (you know another word for playing with yourself, right?) to make you feel good about yourself.

If you paid to attend a conference that sold you on the value of ‘Value’, you got ripped off. Unless your government paid for it, in which case I got ripped off.

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From your comment I assume you have no idea what a value based business is. I said nothing about what is desired by society. And a valued based business sees beyond the single measurement of profit as how successful they are.
And if you look at what is going on in America today, I find it difficult to say the pursuit of the almighty dollar alone has been a noble cause.

jodyneel’s last blog post..Tech still controls its own destiny?!?