The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsIn the age of AI, purpose is becoming a business strategy
AI, social media and universal connectivity are making corporate behavior radically more transparent.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Set as preferred source
A person is silhouetted next to the logo of the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance on July 6 in Geneva, Switzerland. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
I
started my career as a banker and currency trader. If there was anywhere to learn the logic of profit first, it was the trading floor.
I subsequently moved into leadership and learning roles at American Express, Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley. At Goldman Sachs, I helped build and run its Pine Street leadership academy; at Morgan Stanley and Coca-Cola, I served as Chief Learning Officer. Across these very different organizations, one idea remained remarkably persistent: the primary purpose of business was to maximize shareholder returns.
For much of the past half-century, that assumption has been associated with Milton Friedman. But the world in which it flourished was very different from the one business leaders inhabit today.
Companies once possessed something enormously valuable: information asymmetry. They knew considerably more about their operations than their employees, customers, investors or the public did.
That advantage is disappearing.
We have entered what I call the “Glass-house economy”, an era in which AI, social media and universal connectivity are making corporate behavior radically more transparent.
Supply chains can increasingly be scrutinized from end to end. Worker treatment is searchable. Environmental externalities are more readily audited. Executive behavior can become part of the permanent public record, while a customer's experience can be broadcast to millions rather than captured quietly in a survey. For business leaders, that changes the economics of purpose.
