» On business

… nine wide-ranging quotations

These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That’s certainly what I’m hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.

Scott Adams . 1957- . American cartoonist and satirist . The Dilbert principle

The notion that business and government are and should be partners is ubiquitous, unremarkable, and repeated like a mantra by leaders in both domains. It seems a compelling and innocuous idea—until you think about what it really means.

Joel Bakan . 1959- . Canadian lawyer and writer . The corporation (2004)

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx?

Paddy Chayefsky . 1923-1981 . American screenwriter and novelist . film, Network (1976)

Somebody’s paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They’re getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it.

Noam Chomsky . 1928- . American linguist, cognitive scientist, philosopher, activist . quoted, interview, International socialist review (Barsamian, 2003)

Part of America’s industrial problems is the aim of its corporate managers. Most American executives think they are in the business to make money, rather than products or service…The Japanese corporate credo, on the other hand, is that a company should become the world’s most efficient provider of whatever product and service it offers. Once it becomes the world leader and continues to offer good products, profits follow.

William Edwards Deming . 1900 –1993 American statistician, college professor and author . Out of the crisis (1982)

1 The customer is not dependent upon us—we are dependent upon him.
2 The customer is not an interruption of our work—he is the purpose of it.
3 The customer is not a rank outsider to our business—he is a part of it.
4 The customer is not a statistic—he is a flesh-and-blood human being completely equipped with biases, prejudices, emotions, pulse, blood chemistry and possibly a deficiency of certain vitamins.
5 The customer is not someone to argue with or match wits against—he is a person who brings us his wants. If we have sufficient imagination we will endeavor to handle them profitably to him and to ourselves.

Kenneth B Elliott . 1896-1986 . American business man . quoted in Printers’ Ink (magazine, 1941)

Organizations are defined from the inside out: they are described by who reports to whom, by departments and processes and matrices and perks. A business, on the other hand, is defined from the outside in by markets, suppliers, customers, and competitors.

Thomas A Stewart . 1948- . American business writer, management consultant . introduction, Intellectual capital: the new wealth of organizations (1998)