Business, Profits, and Purpose

Many people believe that the belief in the importance of profits is the big, dangerous idea we need to worry about. But it’s not. There is nothing wrong with zealously pursuing profits, so long as you don’t do so through anti-social means (Facebook and Dangerous Ideas on The Business Ethics Blog).

This strikes me as both right and wrong. Surely, merely making a profit on one's activity is morally neutral. In fact, the claim seems to me to be almost trivial. (Of course, that doesn't mean that the claim shouldn't have been made—sometimes it is quite valuable to remind ourselves of trivial truths.) But the quote above seems to miss one aspect of the criticism of the zealous pursuit of profits: that doing so encourages (and, some would argue, requires) anti-social means in doing so.

Now, I don't think that acting in a morally correctly fashion and pursuing profits are, in principle, mutually exclusive. However, I do think that one's conception of business might very well preclude certain kinds of morally required actions/attitudes. I offer just one suggestion: if we think that the purpose of business is to make a profit by providing goods and services, then we conceive of business as driven by those profits. However, if we think that the purpose of business is to provide goods and services through making a profit, we get a different picture of the relationship of that business within a society. Now, a business's purpose is conceived as being part of a moral community.

Just a thought off the top of my head today.