Analysis Of Robert Solomon´s A Better Way To Think About Business

Business has as a whole has had its own set of values for prolonged period of time. Everyone in the world of business knows the type of morals they should have and they all share the same hidden point of view. Robert Solomon, author of A Better Way to Think About Business, goes into the details about different business standpoints and the virtues of this world. The book focuses on individuals rather a corporations and how it is all about personal success that will drive a company to achieve success. He breaks it down into three sections and each focuses on key components that a person should reflect on in themselves when thinking about business. The author later goes on in the book and gives definitions according to him on terms that are used/needed

Business is complex and has many layers. However, Solomon uses the phrase “The Game of Business” and mentions how the loss of making business enjoyable was lost a long time ago (19). Reading through this wasn’t something I expected to think more about, but as I thought about this said “game” there is so much to say. According to Solomon, the key issue with this metaphor is that it “makes business too self-enclosed and merely coincidentally connected with productivity, service, and prosperity” (21). Business should be more than those three things and it is not often that someone takes a chance to think about every meaning of business. When the word business is said, a person will assume money or wealth. Solomon shows the reader that shouldn’t be the case and the metaphor needs to be ditched. I was nodding along to the words that I read in agreement thinking how I did not see this. The importance of knowing to throw away the game is because that is when people in the business world make impersonal connections to what they are doing instead of involving themselves in

A word every person can see and think back to a moment where they have once felt this emotion whether they have wanted to or not. Richard Solomon doesn’t hide the fact that shame is a part of the business world and it happens. He puts next to the term that it is a “quasi-virtue”, what does this mean? (104) I thought the same thing as I encountered the term. Well, it simply means that from the term being coined by Aristotle that “…for shame is essential to having a virtuous character.” (104). My definition was more focused on embarrassment of doing something wrong rather than the actual wrong doing unlike Solomon. On the other hand, I never thought it was bad to have this trait in a corporation and the book shows that it is in fact not, but rather it is