This View of Life by Wilson David Sloan

Author:Wilson, David Sloan [Wilson, David Sloan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

BUSINESS GROUPS

A business, or firm, is a group of people with the shared endeavor of manufacturing a product or providing a service. It goes without saying that members of a business group must cooperate to accomplish their goals. In addition, between-group competition is fiercer in the business world than in most other walks of life. It therefore stands to reason that if the CDPs are required for groups to function well, they should have become standard business practice in the same way that they have become standard religious practice.

Yet this is very far from the truth. Instead, there is a widespread perception that the game of business hardball is played by a different set of rules, symbolized by the fictional character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. Greed is good, your value to society is measured by your wealth, and the only responsibility of a business is to maximize profits for its shareholders. Conventional morality isn’t needed because the invisible hand of the market ensures that everything will come out right.

This worldview has become so pervasive that we have grown accustomed to it, as if it must be true, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. In reality, it is a very idiosyncratic view that has its roots in the nineteenth century but didn’t become prominent until the mid-twentieth century. It is based on the particular form of reductionism known as Homo economicus, which imagines people as entirely self-regarding agents operating in a frictionless market.25 Here is how the economist Herbert Gintis describes the influence of Homo economicus on the business world:

After World War II, business schools blossomed all over the United States. All the major universities set up business schools. Before that, businessmen were just businessmen. They didn’t go to college, or if they did they didn’t learn anything about business. But these new business schools were very professional. When they wanted to teach economics, they simply borrowed from the economics discipline. In economics it’s called Homo economicus. Homo economicus is not that popular any more but it certainly was after World War II. Homo economicus has no emotions. He’s totally interested in maximizing his wealth and income. He really doesn’t care about other people, although he does care about leisure. Leisure, income, and wealth are the only things. When they taught this to business school students it obviously followed that if you’re a good businessman you should just maximize your material wealth. This is greedy. Being greedy is human, it’s good to do, and the more greedy you are the more successful you’ll be.26

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