Business community

“ If coöperation between the parties to industry is sound business and good social economics, why then is antagonism so often found in its stead? The answer is revealed in a survey of the development of industry. In the early days of industry, as we know, the functions of capital and management were not infrequently combined in the one individual, who was the employer. He in turn was in constant touch with his employees. Together they formed a vital part of the community. ”

“ They have one standard when they look out on the community at large, and another standard when they are preparing the way to make and hold fast their own gains. The directors of business come easily to think that the welfare of the community is identical with their own welfare, and that the enterprise with which they sustain their own affairs is identical with that on which the public prosperity depends. They readily come to the conclusion that their activity, so essential to the community, should be cherished by the community. How possibly can production progress without them. ”

“ It is as if the community entered into a sort of agreement with the worker to the effect that it will provide him with a living in return for definite service to the community or for the product of his labor. What we call "business" is SELLING A SERVICE. It may be personal service, such as teaching, or prescribing medicine, or nursing, or giving legal advice, or cutting hair, or driving a team, or running an automobile. ”

“ There has been a large mass of business in this country, in which the community has been unable to recognize any productive service; it has been regarded only as a means of acquisition for those who pursue it. ”

“ The local association has to learn how to conduct its business just as does the individual business man, and it has to compete with individuals and firms who are in business for profit and who have the advantage of experience in the existing marketing system and the financial backing of its business connections. ”

“ The contemplated move is manifestly chimerical in any community, such as the modern industrial communities, where public policy is with growing singleness of purpose guided by business interests with a naive view to an increase of profits. ”

“ And often, whole new industries are created when entrepreneurs found new companies to bring new products and services to market. The drive that is required to begin and run a small business illustrates the determination, hard work, and community involvement that are so essential to our free enterprise system. ”

“ When the student passed to the professional study of business he would be expected to master the fundamentals of business organization and management, including the basic elements of subjects like accounting, finance, and other divisions of organization common to all lines of business. All of these studies would be pursued with constant reference to the fact that business is carried on in a community in which certain public policies are enforced and in recognition of the fact that business should conform to these policies and help to make them effective in contributing to public welfare. ”

“ The larger part of the collective existence of every community is consumed in transactions of buying and selling, of letting and hiring, of alliances between men for purposes of business, of delegation of business from one man to another ”

“ Existing Organisation of Industry Inadequate Is our present organization of industry in any way suggestive of a partnership, in which Labor, Capital, Management, and the Community are regarded as interrelated and interdependent? ”

“ No longer must industry be thought of as a mere revenue-producing process, in which Capital, Labor, Management, and the Community meet like so many rival and contending factions, each to appropriate to itself by force or might the largest possible share of the fruits of industry. Industry must be thought of, as in reality it is, as in the nature of social service, and participation in industry, whether in the form of labor or capital investment, as social service of the highest kind, since upon its successful accomplishment rest all other forms of human service. ”

“ The community, furthermore, is the consumer of the product of industry, and the money which it pays for the product reimburses capital for its advances and ultimately provides the wages, salaries, and profits that are distributed among the other parties. ”

“ The general advantages of the commerce, apart from the profits of the agents, are alone the proper concern of the community: as for the mere profits of the agency the only interest of the community is, that they shall be as low as possible. ”

“ Production We will promote and recognize Industries and investments that have social profitability, with specific policies for large companies, for small businesses and for community and cooperative sectors. ”

“ We must recognise that it is the application of this rule which has ensured the successful development of consumers' societies, since it gives to each member a reward proportionate to his co-operative zeal, to his loyalty to his shop. Besides, it is founded on one of the most certain of economic laws, the law that the success of a business enter- prise depends less on its capital than on its customers. It is therefore just that the profits should belong to those who by their acts ensure the prosperity of the society. ”

“ It is this theme, coöperation in industry, that I desire to develop.
We must ask ourselves at the outset certain fundamental questions:
First, what is the purpose of industry? Shall we cling to the conception of industry as an institution, primarily of private interest, which enables certain individuals to accumulate wealth, too often irrespective of the well-being, the health, and the happiness of those engaged in its production? Or shall we adopt the modern viewpoint and regard industry as being a form of social service, quite as much as a revenue-producing process? ”

“ Opposed in many of their most essential conditions to the capable men who are of primary importance in the social body, is the great and growing [Pg 98] variety of non-productive but active men who are engaged in more or less necessary operations of organization, promotion, advertisement, and trade. There are the business managers, public and private, the political organizers, brokers, commission agents, the varying grades of financier down to the mere greedy camp followers of finance, the gamblers pure and simple, and the great body of their dependent clerks, typewriters, and assistants. ”

“ In bringing about industrial relations, the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial organizations have the function of creating partnerships, developing business, expanding the field of work, and giving welfare to the workers/laborers in an open, democratic and fair way. ”

“ It is the Community, organized in various ways, which maintains government and foreign relations, secures law and order, fosters the arts and inventions, aids education, breeds opinion, and promotes, through concession or otherwise, the agencies of transportation, communication, credit, banking, and the like, without which any production, save the most primitive, would be impossible. It is the Community which creates the demand for commodities and services, through which Labor is provided with remunerative employment, and Capital with a return upon its investment. ”

“ The resources of numberless commercial enterprises are each in this day reckoned in millions, and their products are figured in terms of many millions more, as once thousands represented the spread of even the greatest of industries. But more and more business men are coming to realize that business organization as it affects for [Pg 54] weal or woe thousands who contribute to their success, must be conducted as a trust for the common good, and not merely for selfish exploitation, or for oppression. ”

“ We therefore demand a strong National regulation of inter-State corporations. The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The concentration of modem business, in some degree, is both inevitable and necessary for national and international business efficiency. ”

“ I urge businesses, educators, community organizations, labor unions, the media, government leaders, and consumers to recognize the pursuit of quality and excellence in every aspect of our lives, and to contribute to consumer and economic awareness during this week. ”

“ Assess how businesses currently fulfil their corporate social responsibility in this area, through the full range of existing measures, and identify whether any changes need to be made to these measures,The Review will need to work with consumers, regulatory bodies and business representatives in identifying any possible changes. ”

“ The question to which an answer is sought in discussing the present phase of the development is not a question as to what is taking place as respects the institution of business enterprise, but rather a question as to what form should be given to an optimistic policy of fostering business enterprise and turning it to account for the common good. ”

“ It tends to the highest well-being of the community, that is, to its possession of a maximum of vital attraction for individuals, that this industry should supply a variety of sources of income; that is, wages, profits and interest. If the community can retain in its own bounds the owners of its industries, at least in some numbers, and the capitalists whose wealth is invested in these industries, it is [Pg 96] of great service. ”

“ The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. ”

“ Now, if for this conception of a central Government, we substitute that of a body of persons occupied in industrial pursuits, of whom each adds in his private capacity to the common store, we at once obtain an approximation to the actual condition of a civilized mercantile community, from which approximation we might easily proceed into still completer analysis. ”

“ The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of the nation in which it operates. ”

“ Looking at the process of economic life as a whole and taking it in its rationalized bearing as a collective endeavor to purvey goods and services for the needs of collective humanity, the office of the money unit - money transactions, exchange, credit, and all the rest that make up the phenomena of business - is perhaps justly rated as something subsidiary, serving to facilitate the distribution of consumable goods to the consumers, the Consumption of goods being the objective point of all this traffic. ”

“ And this recognition of the essential partnership in management between Associations of Producers and that Association of Consumers which is the community in one or other form, will, we suggest, take different shapes in different industries and services, in different countries, and at different periods; and, as we must add, will necessarily take time and thought to work out in detail. ”

“ Such a policy represents one of the finer products of the process of systematically developing all the factors in modern business—the stamping of a strong individuality upon all of the correspondence of a large organization. ”

“ The cultivation of speculative knowledge, though one of the most useful of all employments, is a service rendered to a community collectively, not individually, and one consequently for which it is, primâ facie, reasonable that the community collectively should pay ”

“ The efficient administration of these co-operative Corporations being demonstrated by their financial success, makes it unnecessary to dwell upon the details of their intensely developed organization. Existing as they do upon so broad a comprehension of the whole commercial and social structures, it is little wonder that they have proven their value to the community. ”

“ In the further development of the organization of labor and of large business, the public interest as well as the interest of labor and of capital will be furthest advanced by whatever stimulates every man to do the best work of which he is capable and to render useful service, by a fuller recognition of the common interests of employers and employed, and by an earnest effort to dispel distrust and hatred and to promote good-will. ”

“ Today intellectuals, as cooperators, are active in many of the following professions or lines of business and the demand for such experts is increasing: Accountancy, publicity, law, research, teaching, organization work, architecture, store management and merchandising, bakery management, restaurant management, laundry management, banking, insurance, dairying, contracting and building, coal distribution. ”

“ Diversified as the functions of the express companies have become, success has more than kept pace with their extension into varied fields, and a keen, wideawake public interest in the express business is demanded, not alone by the public and necessary character of the business itself, but still more by the extraordinary return which the companies receive for service performed. ”