Values-Driven Business How to Change the World, Make Money, and …

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could adopt similar policies and practices and still make money. 8. Values-Driven Business … will you make money? Or will you simply drive yourself into …

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Content
An excerpt from
Values-Driven Business
How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun
by Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick
published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Copyright . 2006, All Rights Reserved.1
1
Perhaps you run a business of your own. For years, you’ve been
working impossible hours, neglecting family, friends, and the activities
you really enjoy.
Maybe you’re convinced that a business shouldn’t have to
treat customers and employees as expendable, ignore the needs of
the community where it’s located, or pollute the air and water.
Or maybe you’ve been working for a company that’s making
use of few if any of your talents. You’re a cog in someone
else’s machine, and you don’t get the respect you deserve. Yet
you’ve plugged away, year after year.
Questions about the purpose of life and the meaning of work
are certainly not unique to people in business. But they take special
shape in the business world. The circumstances that so often
lead people in business to wonder about life’s meaning are themselves
special.
For one thing, business is commonly regarded in our time
as a way to pursue the accumulation of money, pure and simple.
Loud voices in the business establishment, in academia, and
in government insist that’s so. Sometimes they go much further,
asserting that making profits is the only legitimate purpose of
business.
So, why are you
in business?…