Tentang Keuntungan

dari "Ten Points about Profit" - Martin Wolf

"Fourth, the idea that a company is an entity that can be freely bought and sold is culturally specific. It is the view, above all, of Anglo Americans. It is not shared in most of the rest of the world. The reason for this divergence is that, for many cultures, a company is viewed as being an enduring social entity.

I once read that, for many Japanese, one can no more sell a company over the heads of its workers than one can sell one's grandmother. In this view, goods and services can be bought and sold. Companies, like countries (or as we all now agree, people), must not be.

In this perspective, shareholders are not genuine owners. They contribute nothing of value to the competitive strenghts of the firm, enjoy the benefits of limited liability, and are well able to diversify the risks they run. They are merely an (ever shifting) group of people with a claim to the residual income. Those with the biggest (undiversifiable) investment in hte firm - and thus the greatest exposure to firm-specific risks- are not shareholders but core workers. The interest of the latter are, therefore, paramount.