A comment on the blog today has made me think about the real nature of the 'company'.
The word company has two roots. The first is 'com', which when compounded usually means 'together' and things akin to it.
The second is 'panis', which is the Latin for bread.
Company does, therefore, imply those who share bread together.
It's an interesting idea. There are obvious theological elements to this. But there are also social ones. Who is, and is not, invited to this meal is the question the meaning gives rise to. How far is the largesse spread?
Is it just to those who have ownership of the bread, as the concept of 'share'holder value might imply?
Or does the process of sharing extend beyond that to all those who participate in the process of production of the common good?
It's not an idle question. The company with whom we share bread matters a great deal in just about every aspect of the life we lead.
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The company we keep is oft referred to by the media. For Corbyn it was the slander that because he met with Hamas the IRA and such like makes him an undesirable willing to sell us out to people with dubious ethics. However, when Cameron makes deals with China and Saudi Arabia there is narey a mention of their barbaric treatment of people and Cameron is touted as a political saviour. Strange times we live in.
I’m a great fan of Richard Wolf and his ‘Democracy in the Workplace’ movement http://www.rdwolff.com/. The co-operative model seems such an obvious answer (and one that Corbyn has put forward for re-nationalisation) -this way you can ditch the extraneous shareholder with their dividend obsession regardless of the moral/ethical dimensions of the business with which they will have no connection other than where a computer directs what they hold.
Worthe watching the documentary on RT ‘Banana Land’ which shows how companies like Dole have used violence,chemical poisoning of local communities as the basis of their ‘company.’ How many shareholders give a hoot about that?
Writing recenly on the evolution of “business for good” in which my late colleague was a pioneer, I describe the relevance of the shareholder mandate and the argument that this is needed for any commitment of profit to causes which might reduce shareholder return which since Friedman , many see as the only responsibility of business.
The social business model, does not deliver any financial return to investors other than their original stake.
Who you do it with matters too:
“In the fimal analysis perhaps what matters as much if not more as any distrbution of profit, is who you do business with. When social business partners with corporations with a reputation for exploting the developing world or exploting the finite resources of the natural world, whatever is done in the name of good is far outweighed by the negative impact of overall operation. Likewise, social enterprise supported by soft government channels which do business with despotic leaders and corrupt oligarchs, clearly isn’t the way to go”
http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/448
In 2009, it was the Papal encyclical Caritas in Veritate where the term people centred was used in the context of our economy. Our 1996 paper had reasoned that the true purpose of business was to benefit people rather than maximise profit and we’d see this argument repeatedly from the Catholic Church over the next few years, up to and including Pope Francis.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/367