The Original Values of Business

Abstract

Abstract The original values of business arise as manifestations of natural evolutionary processes. The forms they take reflect the operation of basic physical processes of the universe. This evolutionary embeddedness gives them their distinctive function in organized life and causes them to be an essential component in sustaining life itself. Although, as will be told subsequently, these values have an acquired cultural meaning, they are rooted firmly in biophysical and biochemical processes that gave them their first significance. As values, they are emergent from, or extrusions of, these natural processes, only subsequently being assigned a conceptual and culturally symbolic significance. As noted in the preceding chapter, the original values of business are the most fundamental, most archetypal, most basic values present in the business system. Their central position in the business value matrix is testimony to, and largely explained by, their emergence from a natural evolutionary process of the most comprehensive, all-encompassing character. Indeed, the range of phenomena encompassed within that process extends from the microscopic dimensions of molecular genetics to the large-scale phenomena of cosmic evolution. Across that entire spectrum, one finds what appear to be physical constants at work that give momentum and force to evolutionary tendencies. It is those physical constants that have spawned, and continue to justify, the original values of business. Just how that naturalistic process has produced such a result is worth careful attention.