Week 12

A lot of the terms in this article was a little difficult to understand for me, but I did my best. I think that virtue and integrity are extremely vital to an economy. If no one was trustworthy in their business affairs their businesses wouldn’t be able to continue anymore. Charles Handy says, “So we will be left to rely increasingly on governments for the creation of our wealth, something that they have always been conspicuously bad at doing.” Basically, saying that if there are no businesses out there, we would have to heavily on the government, and that’s something we don’t want to happen as they have always done such a bad job doing it. When people and businesses have the virtue and integrity everything is trusted, people trust them that they’ll do a great job, and there are no worries wondering if the business is accountable or credible. Also, when you do have that virtue and integrity, you stick out like a sore thumb, and people and businesses will want to work with you and want you on their team because you are trustworthy. If you didn’t have integrity and virtue no one would want, you on their team either. According to Charles Handy the real justification for the existence of businesses is to get wealthy from what I understood, is through stock market capitalism. Charles Handy talks of stock market capitalism, and the criterion of success is the shareholder value, as expressed by a company’s share price. He talks of ways to influence share price which are proposed solutions such as 1) buying and selling businesses and 2) cutting or postponing expenditures that are geared to the future will increase profits immediately. I agree with Charles Handy because these two ways can influence the share price which is what someone wants in order to make money according to the article.