Summary Chapter 17 Hoffman - Management as a calling
Find a calling within management, one that is designed to serve not just shareholders but also society—
employees, customers, the community, the natural environment
David Brooks described this focus as a shift from résumé virtues to eulogy virtues in setting goals for your
life
- Resume virtues – skills you bring to the market
- Eulogy virtues – deep characteristics like honest, faithful etc
Business people important to invest in eulogy virtues as they have important influence on how society is
structured.
The actions of corporations, as much as the individuals who inhabit them, decide how we will live and adapt
in a world that climate change, species extinction, income inequality, and other social and environmental
issues are altering. Corporations can, at their best, “be vehicles of social progress and the solution to basic
problems such as the provision of food, healthcare, education and other human needs and wants” and, at
their worst, “provide the tools to multiply the effects of the darkest of human impulses and result in
terrorism, genocide, and labor camps
How to cope with the problems of the world?
- Shared responsibility and community relationships.
- Strengthen the collective institutions and values.
In this dystopian scenario
- No one will define problems or create solutions to address them. Will become worse!
- Voices of institutions that address problems will be unable to deliver knowledge with certainty or
authority and are blunted by other actors offering contrary assessments.
- Multiple, divergent, and competing perspectives will lead to little consensus or consideration for
solutions such that we continue down the path of political and economic polarization
- Over time, this future will lead to ever-increasing government dysfunction, market failures, and
social incivility, which will limit our ability to enjoy many of the benefits that we take for granted
today
- Individual survival and personal gain more important.
Intermediate scenario
- Effort to tackle environmental and social problems for monetary reasons (creating jobs, increase
market activity etc)
- many metrics of the market agenda, such as gross domestic product (GDP), return on investment
(ROI), and discount rates, do not capture the full scope of environmental or social impact and act as
limited guideposts for recognizing, much less solving, the problems we face. In all of these cases,
money and the time value of money are all that register and the associated environmental and social
costs are overlooked.
- Economic value > other values.
- Environment seen as an economic asset
- An attendant belief is that the market will always yield socially positive outcomes and market
success would eventually lead to environmental or social remediation.
- they produce goods and services that allow consumers to continue to consume as they always have
government supporting actor for the market by regulations that make economic growth
(negotiating outcomes for benefit of the market).
o So by using presently dominant logics and values, fastest way forward.
Utopian scenario
- a future in which the values of all members of society reflect both acceptance of the realities of our
systemic social and environmental challenges and changes in the way our social, political, and
economic institutions are configured
Find a calling within management, one that is designed to serve not just shareholders but also society—
employees, customers, the community, the natural environment
David Brooks described this focus as a shift from résumé virtues to eulogy virtues in setting goals for your
life
- Resume virtues – skills you bring to the market
- Eulogy virtues – deep characteristics like honest, faithful etc
Business people important to invest in eulogy virtues as they have important influence on how society is
structured.
The actions of corporations, as much as the individuals who inhabit them, decide how we will live and adapt
in a world that climate change, species extinction, income inequality, and other social and environmental
issues are altering. Corporations can, at their best, “be vehicles of social progress and the solution to basic
problems such as the provision of food, healthcare, education and other human needs and wants” and, at
their worst, “provide the tools to multiply the effects of the darkest of human impulses and result in
terrorism, genocide, and labor camps
How to cope with the problems of the world?
- Shared responsibility and community relationships.
- Strengthen the collective institutions and values.
In this dystopian scenario
- No one will define problems or create solutions to address them. Will become worse!
- Voices of institutions that address problems will be unable to deliver knowledge with certainty or
authority and are blunted by other actors offering contrary assessments.
- Multiple, divergent, and competing perspectives will lead to little consensus or consideration for
solutions such that we continue down the path of political and economic polarization
- Over time, this future will lead to ever-increasing government dysfunction, market failures, and
social incivility, which will limit our ability to enjoy many of the benefits that we take for granted
today
- Individual survival and personal gain more important.
Intermediate scenario
- Effort to tackle environmental and social problems for monetary reasons (creating jobs, increase
market activity etc)
- many metrics of the market agenda, such as gross domestic product (GDP), return on investment
(ROI), and discount rates, do not capture the full scope of environmental or social impact and act as
limited guideposts for recognizing, much less solving, the problems we face. In all of these cases,
money and the time value of money are all that register and the associated environmental and social
costs are overlooked.
- Economic value > other values.
- Environment seen as an economic asset
- An attendant belief is that the market will always yield socially positive outcomes and market
success would eventually lead to environmental or social remediation.
- they produce goods and services that allow consumers to continue to consume as they always have
government supporting actor for the market by regulations that make economic growth
(negotiating outcomes for benefit of the market).
o So by using presently dominant logics and values, fastest way forward.
Utopian scenario
- a future in which the values of all members of society reflect both acceptance of the realities of our
systemic social and environmental challenges and changes in the way our social, political, and
economic institutions are configured
