Good Profit - Libro en Inglés

Good Profit – Charles Koch

Charles Koch, chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries, transformed a modest family business into one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, with interests in refining, chemicals, paper, fertilizers, technology and more. In Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World’s Most Successful Companies, he explains the management philosophy he credits for this growth.

Koch calls his approach Market-Based Management. He argues that businesses should earn profits only by creating real value for customers, which he calls good profit, in contrast to profits gained through government favors, cutting corners or exploiting others. He draws on economics, particularly the ideas of thinkers who emphasized markets, incentives and spontaneous order, and explains how he has tried to apply the principles that make free societies prosperous within a company.

The framework rests on five dimensions: vision, which defines how the company can create value; virtue and talents, which concern hiring and developing people with integrity and capabilities; knowledge processes, which focus on sharing and using information effectively; decision rights, which give people authority based on their demonstrated ability; and incentives, which reward employees for the value they create. Koch illustrates each with examples from the company’s history, including mistakes and the lessons learned from them.

Good Profit offers insight into the thinking behind one of the most successful private companies in the world, and will interest business leaders, managers and students of management.

Readers should note that it presents the author’s perspective, and that Koch Industries and the Koch family’s political activities have been the subject of considerable public debate and criticism.