“We can see the layoff. . .”

“That has been the increasingly well-articulated view about the relationship between business and society over the last 20 or 30 years. Milton Friedman famously argued that the societal purpose of business was to maximize profits. This simple act of profit maximization was good in and of itself. That was enough. That was sufficient. What was good for business was sort of axiomatically good for society. But I think, as we have seen [the] effect of business practices on things like health, and nutrition and the mortgage crisis. There is example after example of where actually it is much more complicated than that.

And yes, profit is not inconsistent with society’s needs. But if you think about creating economic value in a narrow way, if you don’t understand really the broader and more subtler, and longer term influences on the ultimate sustainability of the firm’s success, you can get into a situation where that profit really does come at the expense of society. And there is a backlash of society saying, wait a minute; we don’t like this profit.

All of these companies are now reporting increasing profits, but there are no jobs. And the communities are saying: gee it is great that XYZ corporation is making more money, but what is in that for us? We can see the layoff; We can see all the local suppliers who are cut off and have to go out of business; We can see all this development and pollution and strain on resources. We understand that profits are good and we need capitalism. There is this increasing tension between ultimately partners who absolutely are mutually dependent on each other”