This sub constantly sees posts of people experiencing the worst parts of our economy, so I would like to bottle up all these experiences and contextualize them in a constructive guide to find better work while waiting on the larger purpose of this sub, which is societal change. I will first outline the business ideas that cause businesses to be so shit so that you can avoid them, and then give some general guides to identify better workplaces. I am sure many of you on this sub are well aware of the political and financial ideologies that shaped modern capitalism (especially in the American context) so feel free to skip to the second part about better work. For those of you still working in minimum wage service positions…. you're gonna have to wait for societal or political change, sorry.
Essentially it all comes down to the owners/management's belief on what the purpose of business should be (sometimes this gets mixed into the purpose of public and private enterprise debate). Now if you're saying to yourself “companies exist to make a profit, duh.” this is an idea that was invented by people not a fundamental law of physics or something. I would argue that modern day business culture and management degrees have largely been dictated by the work in the 1970's of the Chicago school of economics through to prestige of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, and the political power of Reaganomics. Milton Friedman said, “Businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned ‘merely’ with profit but also with promoting desirable ‘social’ ends…In fact they are . . . preaching pure and unadulterated socialism.” and was staunch in his belief that greed was good, companies existed solely for shareholder wealth maximization, and there should be very few regulations on the market. Believing that companies having this purpose would create a freer and more prosperous society for workers and businesses. So if you're looking to avoid companies that seek to pay you as little as possible and extract the most out of you, then ask what they think the purpose of a company is. Ask how much the company agrees with these statements, “The purpose of a company is shareholder wealth maximization” “The purpose of a company is to maximize profit”. Now many companies today have what are called ESG statements or “environmental social governance” which makes this more complicated and we'll discuss how to differentiate between companies that are posturing and ones that are committed.
As mentioned earlier its very common to have ESG claims, mission/value statements, etc etc. Like Koch Industries has an ESG report. Many of the other forms of including social priorities into the business model have followed a similar trend where they make claims about respecting other priorities, but when push comes to shove they won't do anything that compromises the financial performance of the company. One of the big hurdles is finance courses, because while management degree teach ESG, ethics, and different interpretations of the purpose of business finance courses almost exclusively teach shareholder value creation as the purpose of a company. Even my finance textbook from a few years ago starts with the line “this textbook was written with the purpose of shareholder value creation”. So its important to know what the CFO of a company believes as well. In Europe and some parts of the US a gentleman called Peter Drucker came up with the idea that the purpose of business is to “create and keep a customer”. This can be further improved with “stakeholder capitalism” which seeks to include not only shareholders, or customers but everyone from suppliers, community, employees, customers, owners, etc. Just a few weeks ago the CEO of Blackrock investments made his entire annual letter to CEOs about Stakeholder capitalism. Arguing the only way to create long-term shareholder value is to prioritize social issues and stakeholders. Now how will companies balance the needs and wants of so many stakeholders in business decisions and will some only do it publicly while favoring shareholders in decision making? Probably, but there is lobbying organization running ads in New York and writing op-eds calling the CEO of BlackRock a communist and Chinese puppet so many companies that disagree with stakeholder capitalism at least in the short term will likely make clear their position.
In terms of how to find a company that treats employees better, I would argue that you're looking for a company that treats all employees like an entrepreneur. There is are business management models like RenDanHeyi Model and in some ways the Shingo Model. Which emphasize “intra-prenuership” or “continuous improvement”. What this means is that they see employees as an asset rather than a cost, an investment not a liability. Especially in the RenDanHeyi model where they pay employees based on your results and give you ownership in your own ideas, in contrast to the US where employees commonly leave companies to make their own startups in order to profit from their ideas. There's a typically called micro-enterprise companies that allow for small startups to form within the umbrella of a larger organization. However, as far as I am aware these ideas are rare in management schools, and largely are taught by private consulting, management books, and niche executive education courses. A guiding rod will be asking management the questions about the purpose of a company, if they've read books like “Rigging the Game by Roger Martin”, opinions on Peter Drucker, intrapreneurship, flat-organizations, how to create long term success in a company, etc.
I know this is a rambling mess but its 3 am and I am drunk….