Values-Centered Entrepreneurs and Their Companies

Book Preface

“Greed . . . is good,” Michael Douglas’s character, Gordon Gekko, famously proclaimed in the 1987 movie, Wall Street. Certainly, profit is a critical element in our free enterprise system but the most prominent business headlines of the new millennium suggest that unbounded greed has become the paramount motivator in business (Karl Marx must be wryly smiling from his grave). Of course, business has never been perceived as the most idealistic of professions but its public image, we would venture to say, has shrunk to a new all-time low.

And, no wonder business has such a poor image. We have seen bankers willing to put the entire financial system at risk to maximize their bonuses, observed pharmaceutical companies making drugs unaffordable to millions of people, and learned about oil companies paying lobbyists to create artificial doubts about solid science, just to name a few reasons for business’s poor standing. And these actions are deemed justified and understandable in the name of capitalism! (It is equally amazing to see nice, honest people going to work every morning at these corporations.) But besides the problem of public image, the prevailing self-serving view of business does not really serve anyone, not people, planet or even business itself, at least not in the long term.

As teachers as well as practitioners, we have a rather different view of business’s potential; one that involves individuals starting companies to pursue their dreams for a better world, not just for themselves and their families but also for their customers, partners, and communities. One that employs and empowers people and treats them with dignity. One that shares good fortune with the less fortunate and endeavors to leave behind a better world for the next generation.

Too idealistic? Too impractical? We don’t think so! As we dug into our research, we found more and more entrepreneurial companies whose philosophy and admirable business policies fit our view of business and in many cases exceeded our expectations. Their leaders refused to blindly follow the conventional role of business in society and operated their companies according to an alternative set of values. Their causeorientation combined with entrepreneurial passion inspired innovative and often unorthodox management practices worthy of public attention. Our article, “Socially Responsible Entrepreneurs: What Do They Do (To Create and Build Their Companies)?” published in 2008 in Business Horizons focused on these practices and became a springboard to this book.