What have the Rabobank, IBM and Johnson & Johnson in common? They seek not to maximize profit, but give priority to their social role. Thus they consistently perform better than their competitors.

Anyone who has met his foundation course in business economics, knows that profit is a fiction. The amount underneath the bottom line is the result of tampering and reserve valuations. That we are so fixated on profits is because we believe that the company essentially exists to maximize shareholder value.

Our fixation on earnings also explains what went wrong in the banking world. The social responsibility of a bank is mediating between supply (savings) and demand (business loans). The profit that the bank created, was once only one condition: it ensured the continuity of that task, at the same time it was a signal that the task was efficiently executed.
It went wrong when this task was subordinated to shareholder value, such as ABN Amro, and when the disparity of information between the relevant hunted, such as U.S. subprime mortgages.

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