Companies, their purpose and the common good

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Companies in operation for decades (or even centuries) proudly place on their entrances a "Since" sign, followed by the year of foundation. But in Brazil, a country known worldwide for making the entrepreneurial activity as difficult as possible, any businessman with more than two years in the market should already be proud to display such information to the public. Unfortunately, a notion that the state, not private enterprise, is the engine of economic development has led many to have a vision that describes the entrepreneur – therefore “the boss” - as intrinsically evil, or at least suspicious a priori of insensitivity and greed. Overcoming stereotypes is needed to properly understand what the role of business is.

Firstly, the function of one company is the same as that of many other existing organizations: serving society by providing the products or services it needs. For its survival, it is imperative that it fulfills this role satisfactorily - hence the emphasis that so many companies put on customer service and the consumer. But seeing the spirit of service to the consumer only by the prism of the economic maintenance of the company is still an incomplete way to correctly understand the so-called "social function" of the company. Tomás Melendo, in The Keys to Business Efficiency, affirms that the "basic purposes, the only ones that can rigorously serve the purpose of ultimate or supreme end, are summed up in a few words: to contribute to the personal improvement of those with whom the company relates".

“The view that describes the “boss” as intrinsically evil is a stereotype that must be overcome"

In other words: entrepreneurial activity goes beyond voluntary exchanges between the entrepreneur, his employees, his suppliers and his clients: it is an instrument of human and professional development of all those who have some form of connection with the company - working or doing business with the company or those being impacted by its activity or its advertising, for example. If we believe in the pursuit of excellence as a means of individual fulfillment, professional practice is one of the most important fields in which this pursuit can be carried out and the exercise that leads to it.

Professional work occupies an important part of people's time and it is the locus of ongoing challenges to many of the major human skills and competencies. Either people develop in and through work or they will hardly develop. As for the employees of a particular company, the genuine desire to provide good service or provide a good product is the best backdrop for cultivating the virtues and qualities that every man needs. At the same time, the more altruistic and more competent the members of a particular company are, the further the company will go and the more it will contribute to the construction of the common good, this is to say, for the development of all others related to it.

And the longing for excellence and human achievement through business activity isn’t by no means incompatible with the pursuit of profit. The same ideology that demonizes the "boss" does the same with profit, described as the portion that the "capitalist” (the owner of the "means of production”) steals from its employee. It is high time to put aside this backward view to understanding that profit is in no way morally bad: it is necessary for the maintenance of the company, it is the fair reward that the entrepreneur receives for putting his resources at the disposal of society, it is an index of its competence, it is a means for the company to thrive and grow its contribution to the common good, either by increasing the creation of jobs, or by the quality of service and product they offer. The success of business organizations should be something desired by society.

“Profit is by no means morally bad: it is necessary for the maintenance of the company”

Eventual exploitation, which might always exist, must obviously be curtailed. But only a broad view able to understand and be inspired by free enterprise and business organizations unleashing human potential, is able to identify the exact points, neuralgic, that can generate deviations and dysfunctionalities, that would deserve firm, clear and safe regulation.

It is interesting to observe that this broad view concept we have just mentioned realizes that, even though most of entrepreneurs are not yet idealistic or genuinely concerned for the common good, the very dynamics of business life, with their challenges of offering products and services that are accepted by consumers, in a competitive environment, ends up, nevertheless, generating development and innumerable benefits to society.

This obliges us to observe that legislation should never be drawn up in such a way as to ensure that people, entrepreneurs and company employees should necessarily adopt the higher vision we propose in this text and realize the full significance and scope of corporate social responsibility. Nothing would be more wrong. Any pretension in this sense would be absurd. Excellence, virtue, idealistic convictions should never be required by the legislator, by the government, under penalty of, paradoxically, stultifying the moral perception itself. This ethical dimension of business activity, no matter how great and captivating it may be, cannot be transposed purely and simply as legal stipulations. There is, of course, scope for legislation to stimulate best practice (in addition, obviously, to sanction abuses). Now, what is worth it is the various non-public bodies of society worrying about creating a culture of service and excellence in the business world. Citizens, alone or united with others in movements and associations, as well as through education, have an immense power to influence and shape the way one looks at life and the business world.