Responsible Profit—a New Behavioral Model of Organization

This paper introduces a new concept—responsible profit. This concept provides an ethical foundation for accounting profit, enabling the interests of the organization and those of its employees to enter into a sustainable process of co-evolution. Employees are not merely factors of production, but individuals with feelings, loyalties, hopes, and expectations. The paper defines the concept of responsible profit and then presents a set of arguments explaining why such a concept should be implemented. Next, the paper identifies the component factors of responsible profit that, through their cumulative effect, can produce positive outcomes for organizational performance and its future ability to generate profit. From this perspective, responsible profit incorporates the psychological and social factors of employee motivation—appreciation, social recognition, organizational identification, status, trust, perceived task significance, organizational justice, and job security—as elements that contribute to emotional balance. Conversely, stress-inducing factors reduce individual performance and may affect the company’s overall functioning. The paper examines the ways in which the organization could or should redesign its behavioral approach toward its own employees, structured around three components: the relationship between top management and employees, within a general framework; the relationship between operational management and employees; and the relationships among coworkers, with the latter two analyzed within an interpersonal framework, so that accounting profit takes on the attributes of a reward mechanism that goes beyond the standard salary package. Together, these elements constitute a solid foundation for organizational culture.