Copyright © 2007 John Mackey All rights reserved
Do we need a new way to think about business, corpo-
rations, and capitalism for the 21st century? Do we need
to create a new business paradigm? Corporations are
probably the most influential institutions in the world
today and yet many people do not believe that they
can be trusted. Instead corporations are widely per-
ceived as greedy, selfish, exploitative, uncaring – and
interested only in maximizing profits. In the early years
of the 21st century, major ethical lapses on the part of
big business came to light including scandals at Enron,
Arthur Anderson, Tyco, the New York Stock Exchange,
WorldCom, Mutual Funds, and AIG. These scandals
have all contributed to a growing distrust of business
and further eroded public trust in large corporations in
the United States.
Increasingly, many people believe there must be
something wrong with both corporations and capital-
ism. The anti-globalization movement is primarily an
anti-corporation movement. Many people have come
to the conclusion that corporations want to dominate
and control the world – for example David Korten wrote
an interesting book called When Corporations Rule the
World. While many critics, including myself, take issue
with Korten’s assertions, the book reflects this relatively
common belief that corporations are slowly, steadily
taking over the world. Along this line of reasoning it fol-
lows that this corporate hegemony is not a good thing
since corporations are greedy, selfish, and uncaring,
along this line of reasoning it follows that this corporate
hegemony is not a good thing for the world. In short,
corporations and capitalism are not generally in favor,
and both have serious branding problems.
Our first theories of economics were developed dur-
ing the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that, economics
did not exist as a discipline. Economics was created as
one explanatory response to the Industrial Revolution
and initial economic models were based on industrial
mo