Van Duzer's Perspective on Profit

The dean of the School of Business and Economics, Jeff Van Duzer, is shaking up Seattle’s business leaders with a revolutionary concept: “The business of business cannot be just business. Its sole purpose cannot and should not be to make money.” As you can imagine, he got their attention.

On January 11, at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center, Van Duzer spoke to the Rotary Club of Seattle, unpacking this idea of the purpose of business. Van Duzer argued that the purpose of business ought to be to serve: to serve the community by providing the goods and services needed to enable the community to flourish, and to serve employees by providing jobs as opportunities to express their identities through creative work.

Rather than perceiving ethics as a limitation on the amount of profit to be made, which Van Duzer calls a negative ethics model, he believes businesses should adopt a positive ethics model; a business purporting ‘positive ethics’ would focus on how much service can be accomplished while still maintaining the financial success necessary to continue serving.

“The needs are so great and the resources that business controls are so substantial, it is simply not sufficient to suggest that the purpose of the whole endeavor is just to make more money for shareholders.”

Van Duzer anticipated furrowed brows, cocked eyebrows, and cynical stares and he came prepared. The bulk of his presentation focused on four critiques to his argument and his responses.

Critique #1: Aw, Come On — Doesn’t SPU’s Business School Care About Profit?“
Of course we do. We teach all the traditional business disciplines to help our students as future managers — but never with profit as the ultimate end. Rather we perceive profit as a means to the end of what business is really supposed to be about, a means of attracting capital needed to pursue objectives.”

Critique #2: You Are Naïve — Isn’t Profit as Motive Hard-Wired?
Duzer claims this was not the case even 30 years ago. “Not so many years ago, corporations were more interested in developing long-term, high-reputation, financially sustaining businesses, or in developing a novel idea, or looking for ways to help solve a problem. Only recently have we identified the purpose of business as being pure wealth enhancement for the current investors.”

Van Duzer went on to describe a 2001 study conducted at the country’s top 11 business schools, comparing the attitudes of entering and exiting MBA students. The study concluded that students were socialized into believing that the purpose of business is wealth creation, and did not enter their MBA programs with such attitudes.

Critique #3: Too Extreme — Isn’t This Far Out There?
Van Duzer believes there is a growing trend in business and cited several recent books and articles, which have experienced both critical and consumer success, purporting the importance of business focusing on the greater good. These included “Faith and Fortune: The Quiet Revolution to Reform American Business,” by Fortune Magazine’s Marc Gunther, and “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author.

He also quoted a recent article — “What’s a Business For?” — published in the Harvard Business Review: “The purpose of a business is not to make a profit, full stop. It is to make a profit so that the business can do something more or better.”

Critique #4: This is Anti-Competitive — Will This Work in the Real World?
Quite the contrary, Van Duzer believes this is a highly competitive strategy in today’s knowledge-based economy. Considering the current business climate, employees are any business’s greatest asset, and therefore, connecting employees to a higher purpose is essential for cultivating a satisfied, motivated workforce.

Van Duzer used Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, as an example. “To be a great company, you have to be a good company,” Immelt said. His success at GE can be attributed to his belief that people want to be about something bigger than themselves and working for a company that makes a difference. Van Duzer couldn’t agree more.

As a result of the overwhelming response to this presentation, Van Duzer has booked nearly a dozen upcoming speaking engagements on the same topic.

Jeff Van Duzer is serving in his fifth year as the Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University and Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Business Law. His current areas of research include the ethics of wealth creation and distribution and the applied integration of business and theology. Before coming to SPU, Van Duzer was a partner with the international law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, where he practiced for more than 20 years. He earned his B.A. from the University of California and his J.D. from Yale Law School.