Now and then a new book comes along in which nearly every sentence deserves underlining. Such books are short, essential, and wise. Pursuing a single bright line of clear argument, they depend less on footnoted research than on the author's credibility. They don't come along often because they take a lifetime to write.
Profit with Honor is such a book. In it, Daniel Yankelovich brings decades of work -- as one of the world's most respected social science survey researchers and as a member of numerous corporate boards -- to bear on the theme that long has consumed his attention: values and ethics. His book's subtitle, The New Stage of Market Capitalism, explains accurately if drably what he's after: how businesses can combine ethics and profit making. Had I been his editor, I'd have plumped for a more in-your-face subtitle -- something like, Is Corporate Ethics an Oxymoron, and If Not, What the Heck Can We Do About It?
Even if you're not in business, this question matters. It pulses through today's scandal-soaked headlines. It underlies a Gallup Poll report from last month suggesting that a record four-fifths of Americans now agree that "the state of moral values" in the country is getting worse rather than better. And it leaves us, as Yankelovich argues, facing a "third wave of mistrust of business and other institutions" that, following two earlier waves around the time of the Great Depression and again in the late 1960s, began around 2002.
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