The peddlers of balloon-juice at CNBC are busy lambasting Whole Foods’ founder and president, John Mackey, for writing an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal offering a marketplace alternative to government-run and managed health-care. Their positions can be synthesized in terms of it being bad business policy for companies to get involved in politically controversial issues.
These babblers are doubtless some of the same critics of business decision-making that focuses on nothing more than the enhancement of dollar profits. The “social responsibility of business” has long been a hot topic among the meager-minded. Of course, businessmen who embrace programs designed to enhance state power – such as NBC itself – will be praised for their “progressive” outlooks!
The CNBC crowd – whose focus is financial and other business news – ought to expand its awareness of the motivational differences that separate business owners from business managers. Joseph Schumpeter did some landmark work in this regard, demonstrating how owners tend to have a longer term perspective in their decision-making than do managers. Owners are more concerned with the broader consequences of their actions, while managers – whose mindsets are more akin to other company employees – have a much shorter focus. The role that short-term thinking has had in helping to create our politically-destructive world would be a topic worthy of exploration. It is probably understandable, of course, that the network babblers – themselves employees – would distance themselves from those who think and act more holistically.
I must end this blog now, as I will be heading over to Whole Foods to do some shopping. I don’t know what I will be buying, but I will think of something along the way!
9:22 am on August 26, 2009
