I live in a tower from the middle ages. With this set of exciting Lago-Maggiore-crime novel “Tutto Bene” by Andrea Di Stefano, the I took last week of my vacation at the lake of Constance begins. Aroma of pine, Espresso and a couple of hearty bodies: What is the holiday makers between Konstanz and Überlingen is in need of more?

Rainer Hank

Freelance author in the economy of the Frankfurt General Sunday newspaper.

F. A. Z.

The crime appeared in the joke-Verlag, and is also part of the S. Fischer Verlag, a house with a great Tradition, one thinks of Thomas Mann, or Hugo von Hofmannsthal. On the first page of the book, even before the crime starts, inform the publisher, for me, was obliged out of responsibility for the environment to a “sustainable book production”: “The conscious use of our resources, the protection of the climate and the nature are among our top business objectives,” it says.

until now, I believed that the ultimate goal of a publisher is good books. You have to to p. Fischer to Worry about? The publishing people don’t believe in the business model book and are therefore looking for new “Supreme” corporate objectives?

The Fischer-joke-publishing is not an isolated case, rather a latecomer. There is a fashion that has been raging for a few years, and more and more imitators will find: A company needs a “Purpose”, a purpose that justifies its existence. Of course, a company had to always have a purpose. The genius inventor, Robert Bosch, it was in the year 1901, a spark plug – the “Bosch-Zünder” – as a Patent, in order to fulfil its corporate objective. The would no longer have to go through, while it has served at Bosch at that time to be the initial spark of a sustainable world group.

sense of maximization instead of profit maximization

Today, the “Purpose” is something that has nothing to do with the products that the company manufactures. It is a “higher purpose”, as Professor Bernd Thomsen writes, one of the many management consultants who earn in the Purpose-Business money. “Sense of maximization instead of profit maximization”, sounds the motto. Companies should no longer be to your own advantage, I read in Professor Thomsen: “The requirements set to companies in addition to ranges in the future about proper business conduct.” Because according to the “Harvard Business Review”, one of the first addresses of the Management of said recommendations, it is the most important task of the leaders to take care of the Purpose. Who cares then, but the production of laser cutting machines or migraine medications, if the boss is busy with the Purpose?

Usually not enough for the determination of the Purpose then much more than a poor imitation of the “Fridays for Future”rhetoric and the usual Eco-climate-the Mainstream. Companies used to have their pleasure, to differentiate itself in the competition from each other, suddenly want to be all the Same: sustainably, protecting the climate and a bit of good. If you can manage it, the market leader in this Business – from the Nabu on Greta Thunberg up to the Potsdam Institute for climate impact research – to put in the shade, may be doubted.