Financehome It is not enough any longer to create a demand and to supply it with secondrate merchandise or services. The responsibility of business in this field is immense. A good deal of the current heartsearching in the United States stems from a reconsideration of the 'value' part in the expression 'value satisfaction'. Erwin'Canham, Editor of the Christian Science Monitor, has spoken of '. . . the tawdry materialism of conspicuous consumption, spread by the mass media, accompanied by rock 'n' roll, spluttered by comic books .. . the symbol of America in most of the world' and, elsewhere, 'what has inverted our values? For one thing we have deified production for production's sake. There is nothing wrong with the increased production of consumer goods, but there is a great deal in thinking and acting as if the mere production of goods were a justifiable social goal.. ..' In Britain 'conspicuous consumption' is a pretty new idea. 'Poverty of desire', as Ernest Bevin once put it when considering the galaxy of goods in America and comparing it with the British resistance to innovation, is no longer apparent. Many more people now want more things. It is estimated, for example, that the teenager market unmarried youngsters in Britain between sixteen and twentythree has nearly £ 1,000 million to spend annually. But British business and this thought is developed in a later chapter when discussing management for the consumer is in danger of falling into the trap in which much of American business is currently caught. Inadequate standards of performance, poor design, shoddy, catchpenny goods, totally misleading advertising claims, and a pfwccupation with obsolescence: these are but four examples of what can happen if business is not selfdisciplined. This brief discussion of the business of business has still to concern itself with two other factors which are relevant: they are productivity and profits, and each of them properly calls for a book on its own. Productivity, as is so often said nowadays, is an attitude of mind. It is not to be confused with production which is a fact. Though, by definition, productivity means the better use of all available resources, be they of men, machines, or money, 'better use' implies the existence within a business of an attitude towards its operations which is dominated by the will to do better. It is the means to a fuller life for an even greater number of people and it is not, as seems to be so often assumed, simply a ques [ tion of getting more out of a labour force. Productivity is in any case no longer only concerned with manufacturing, with the substitution of muscle by mind. It ranges into many other fields of business activity, and notably that of distribution. The definition at the beginning of this chapter spoke not only of the creation but the 'delivering' the distribution of value satisfaction. Allowing for the reservations in the previous section, there is immense scope today for increasing productivity by distribution. interior Planning