RE: What is the purpose of a commercial firm?

["Turner, D. John" <jturner@usa.capgemini.com>]

Vic Forte suggests that a commercial business should have compound aims:

Nevertheless there are other stake holders, not only customers and
financiers. So I tend to go along with Mike Tveite, and (surprise surprise
<g>) Dr Deming, a commercial business should have compound aims:

When developing the aim of a system we are constantly reminded that we have
to satisfy all stakeholders - that first of all means that we have to
identify all stakeholders.  Many commercial businesses forget stakeholders
such as the community.  As an example, the nuclear industry, in my opinion,
focused too much on the commercial benefits for electricity generated from
nuclear power and not enough on the working with the environmental
stakeholders, and so was eventually contained.  This is possibly an extreme
example, but how many commercial businesses are not as successful as they
could be because they divert much of their energy to pacifying a stakeholder
group reactively, rather than working with them proactively to ensure that
the system as a whole was more successful and beneficial to all.

I agree with Vic that a commercial business should have compound aims, but
they should be supporting aims which do not detract from one another.  The
balanced scorecard approach is one that attempts this in measuring lots of
different activities but ensuring that they are related and focused on the
main aim of the system.

Best Regards
John Turner
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