What is the primary purpose for business?

The intuitive answer is “to make money, of course”. After all, isn’t profit the investors primary goal? Don’t people take jobs to make money? Most people may think that a business provides a product service to make money. If we dig deeper into the question we may be surprised. I would like to suggest that the primary purpose of business is to serve others. The reason a business strives for profits is to enable the business to provide a product or service to others. It is true that the investor’s primary purpose is to make money. But investors are not the company. Maybe on paper the investors own the company but in reality these “owners” are so far removed from the operations that we cannot say the owners ARE the company. In truth, the employees of the company are the company, from the CEO to the shipping clerk. For them, they live the company’s mission everyday. Let’s take a look at a typical mission statement.

“At Microsoft, we work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. This is our mission. Everything we do reflects this mission and the values that make it possible.”

To the extent that this statement is true, serving is the primary mission at Microsoft. Profits are the enabler. But what about employees? Don’t people work primarily to make money? Yes, this is true. Money may be the reason people take a job but serving is the reason people stay on a job. Once hired, money is no longer a primary motivator. There is much to be said on this topic but for this posting I will say that numerous studies of workplace motivation consistently find that money is low on the list of motivators. Job satisfaction comes from working with others towards a common purpose; that is, serving. For more in-depth information regarding workplace motivation refer to Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. It is service to others that is planted within the human soul. It is working with and serving others that motivates. This is true even if someone is unaware of their own motivation. (Man can be a strange creature - not knowing his own motivations!) Understanding this concept of serving is critical to success in business. As we recently are witnessing on Wall Street, when making money is more important than service then self-destruction will follow. Simply reading the daily news shows this truth to be obvious.

If serving is the primary reason for work, then it follows that to thrive in the workplace we must understand more about what it means to serve. We must make serving integral to our character. The service we give to others must flow from pure motivations and not from self-serving motivations. In looking at the various world views, Christianity singularly make service to others a primary purpose of one’s life. Indeed, Jesus’ mission to this world was not to be served but rather to serve.（Mathew 20：28）If anyone wants to thrive in the workplace, follow the teachings of Jesus. In this way we can fully understand the depth and the breadth of serving.

The Examined Life

The examined life is richer and more worthwhile. Socrates knew this in 400BC and it is still true today. In today's modern life of iPhones and Blackberrys and blogs, the trivial is often louder than the real. This goal of this blog is to probe; to think about things in new ways. This post is not intended to be overly-academic but rather to touch human existence. The goal is to see not just the surface features of life but the underlying causes and effects. I don't exactly know where this journey will take us but since we are relational creatures, it's a journey that is better traveled together. Therefore I invite comments to be posted. I do approach reality with a Christian world view but this blog will not be overly theological. Why the wojiuxiang as the web address? It means "wo jiu xiang" (我就想)which in Chinese is "I am just thinking".