Economic expansion and increase are not aims in themselves. They make sense only as means to a social end.
As far as the potential economic future of the capitalist is concerned, Henry Ford—that grand old man of modern capitalism—was undoubtedly right, and the professional gravediggers of capitalism wrong. But Ford, no less than his critics, forgot that economic expansion and increase are not aims in themselves. They make sense only as means to a social end. They are highly desirable as long as they promise to attain this end. But if this promise is proved illusory, the means become of very doubtful value.
Capitalism as a social order and as a creed is the expression of the belief in economic progress as leading toward the freedom and equality of the individual in the free and equal society. All previous creeds had regarded the private profit motive as socially destructive, or at least neutral. Their social orders had intentionally subjected the economic activity of the individual to narrow limitations so as to minimize its harmful effects upon spheres and activities considered socially constructive.
ACTION POINT: Make sure that in the pursuit of economic performance you develop people.
The End of Economic Man
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker