ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the most fundamental building blocks of business- economics and its impact on generations of managers. It highlights some of the problems with the economics lens and how they negatively affect the effectiveness of the business enterprise and-perhaps, more important-how they encroach on the human condition. The chapter offers that not only do businesses exist to make money, but they have a responsibility toward society to improve the human condition. Reflect on the consequences, direct and indirect, of the Enron collapse or Union Carbide's Bhopal poison gas disaster or asbestos companies from Quebec targeting Third-World countries as markets for their products. Reflect on these and a myriad of similar examples. Corporate actions are every bit as impactful today as the military campaigns of empire once were. Indeed, as Pfeffer has so often reminded us, managers are shirking their responsibilities if they do not incorporate the human equation into their algorithms for running a corporation.
