Financehome It has to do with the total national commitment to the maintenance of a welfare state a welfare state which costs fabulous sums of money. This commitment can be financed only from taxation, direct and indirect, and the contribution by business enterprise to it is binding and permanent. In the early part of this century and, effectively, up till the work of Lord Beveridge, only a fraction of the responsibility for the elimination of the worst aspects of poverty and social injustice was accepted by business groups. The community as a whole is now involved, and the biggest single contributor is business enterprise. Is it not then incumbent upon business, in its relation with society, ceaselessly to improve its profitearning capacity, not only in order to develop its own operations, reward its shareholders, insure against risk, and keep reserves for expansion, but also to play its part in the securing of social objectives about which, today, there is precious little political disagreement? And it is not only the taxation on profits but the vast contribution in local taxation rates and the like which business is called upon to pay. This book is not a political treatise. It does not seek to take sides in the argument of free enterprise against a socialized economy. Possibly the formula that Britain is evolving a reasonable compromise between freedom and control works best for this country. But what is fundamental to the business of business is the fact that if a relatively 'free' economy is to be maintained in which consumer choice and full employment are concomitants, management becomes a matter of high importance. Inefficiency is self The Business of Business 25 Г destroying; the new business technologies which have been touched upon in this chapter place an ever greater emphasis of responsibility on those men and women, from top to bottom in the management structure, who have to take the decisions and give the lead. Qualities of Management Щ pi' THE purpose of this chapter and the one that follows, together with the opening of the discussion on 'How a Manager Manages', entitle the reader to a word of preliminary explanation. Writing about management raises a particular difficulty for both author and reader which is that, inevitably, technical and human aspects tend to overlap. It is not hard to see why. Management is essentially a human affair and this fact overshadows all other considerations. On the other hand, management is a job, and a highly technical one. This chapter will try, in the course of examining management qualities in the more human context, to resolve the point at which the technical qualities yield to the less tangible ones. In so doing it will become clear that tHeTeadership quality, both in the manager himself and in the management process, is clearly the prime factor. Therefore a short chapter somewhat speculative and searching has been set aside from the main stream of the book in order to look at leadership in somewhat more abstract terms. interior Planning