Chapter 1. Purpose and Performance: Leveraging the Essence of a Corporation

Profit is not the proper end and aim of management—it is what makes all of the proper ends and aims possible.

—David Packard^[1]

Purpose affects the soul of the corporation: its rationale for existing, its strategy, its goals, its way of managing, and the motivation and commitment of its people. Because of these pervasive effects, when firms with different purposes collide in the marketplace, the one with the competitively superior purpose will prevail, other things being equal.