A Preface to the People-Centered Economy for the People of Vietnam
It is an honor to write this preface to the Vietnamese translation of the People Centered Economy. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Sung Nguyen, who translated the book, has introduced me to the history and culture of Vietnam and it is in that context that the preface is written.
Too often it is assumed that economies are the product of businesses and that private sector businesses are all about maximizing profits and shareholder values. These themes lead to efforts to reduce cost and increase profit by executing tasks more efficiently or by automating some of them to eliminate or reduce the cost of labor. The maximization of shareholder value, while a popular idea introduced in the 1980s, has the unfortunate consequence of discounting or ignoring the value of many of the people whose work makes a company valuable. In this book, a primary theme is that we should be maximizing the value of people rather than reducing the cost of task completion. Done well, we may even achieve both objectives at the same time.
There is a long history of distinguishing "owners" and "workers." Sometimes this goes along with the distinction between "management" and "labor" although not all managers are necessarily owners (shareholders). In this book, I hope you will discover that the well-being of a workforce is strongly associated with its sense of self-value and value to the company. Compensation is an important component of satisfaction, and a component of that should be literally sharing in the ownership of the company whose value is increased by the work of its employees. There exist companies that are "employee-owned." Cooperatives are another form in which the participants share in the value of the organization. Publicly traded companies often offer shares of the company to employees at a discount or include shares of the company as part of a compensation package. Such arrangements reinforce the message that everyone in the company has a mutual interest in the company's success.
Recurrent themes in this book circle around questions like "How can I help my fellow employees to be more productive?" or "How can I make myself (and my team, for managers) more valuable to the company?" The creation and maintenance of productive work environments is vital to healthy economies. Respect, diversity, collaboration and inclusiveness are elements that contribute to such positive outcomes and are increasingly recognized as important policy foci for company leaders.
It would be hard to overstate the importance to social and economic well-being of the principles expressed in this book. They apply beyond private sector organizational structures to infuse national and regional institutions and processes with deeper respect for human values. In economies where people are valued for themselves in addition to their work, one expects to find other indices of happiness, satisfaction and well-being to be stable and high.
Vietnam has climbed a steep technological ladder in the course of the past several decades. I have been most impressed by the way in which Vietnamese technologists have adopted digital technology and have implemented Internet-based networks and applications running over them.
