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 the
challenges posed by the demands of these diverse stakeholder groups.
