The essence of the contemporary business organisation: a critical reflection

Abstract

From a critical perspective, a dialectical conversational approach is followed in this paper to revisit and challenge the ontological question of why a business exists in the first place, thus reopening the argument on the original purpose of the business organisation. After proposing our ontological stance, we investigate three factors that (in our understanding) constitute a distortion of this original ontological position concerning the reason for existence of business organisations, these being the Business School mentality, the pop-culture mechanism of management and our pre-occupation with quantification. This paper concludes that the original purpose of the business organisation has been distorted to suite the 20th century conception of American capitalism. In an era where exceeding pressure is being placed on business organisations to occupy the moral high-ground, a rethink of what a business organisation is fundamentally about might be necessary to meet challenges posed by the demands of these diverse stakeholder groups.