Business Philosophy: Mission, Shared Values, Vision and Business Strategy
Since the industrial revolution machine power has replaced traditional animal power and man power in the production of goods, and with this change has come a corresponding vigorous development in corporate management. For some two hundred years "technology" and "management" have interacted and complemented each other to become two great pillars that are constantly raising the level of human society's power of production. Society's investment in creating the corporation was a search for optimum interaction with technology in order to fully master the mechanism for raising the power of production, to create profits and to benefit people. Although the corporation is a product of society's investment, its organizational components are its employees and thus the employees must identify with and be intimately familiar with the specific goals of the corporation.
The corporation combines the labor of many people through its use of contracts, integrating the duplicated work of many individuals, thus production is very efficient, and it is the accumulation of efficiencies that is the hallmark of corporate performance. The corporation then gives a return to the various organizational members. The corporation is able to add together the abilities of numerous people so their labor is not restricted by time or space and thus the corporation surpasses what any single individual can achieve, and experience and knowledge are able to accumulate indefinitely and expand without limit. The life of the corporation is thus able to go on forever, surpassing the short life of the individual. This is the positive significance of the individual's participation in corporate life.
For this reason in its business philosophy the corporation explains the specific goals it pursues, describes the return on corporate performance as well as how the corporation can have a life that outlasts that of the individual. Accordingly, IAC's business philosophy is expressed by the following four concepts: Mission, Shared Values, Vision, and Business Strategy.
Mission and Share1d Values are closely linked together.
The corporation is able to come into existence through the investment of resources, like the money invested by shareholders, the participation of numerous employees and colleagues, customer orders for goods and services as well as the coordination of suppliers. After its creation the corporation puts internal and external processes into operation and achieves the commensurate performance. The support and investment of shareholders is the basis permitting the corporation to begin life and continue. Thus commitment and trust plus performance returns vis-à-vis the shareholders should be the top priority as far as the corporation's responsibilities are concerned.
Based on these facts, IAC's corporate mission is to "create performance, benefit people." The "mission" represents the highest level of business philosophy and so succinctly makes a direct connection between the corporation's basic achievement--"creating performance"--and its ultimate objective--"benefiting people." The fundamental requirement is to first show performance, thus the achievement of performance targets is the necessary condition for the existence of the corporation. The corporation's stated objective with regard to returns on performance goes beyond the narrow definition of just a few people to a broad swath of "stakeholders" that includes shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, the general public as well as the environment. A well-known management expert once said: "Running a corporation is like climbing two tall mountains. The first mountain is that of corporate performance, the second is that of social responsibility." This point of view is in perfect harmony with IAC's corporate mission.
Corresponding with the corporate "mission" are the "shared values" that embody the expectations and demands put upon each individual member. Of course, living in a society where information is universally available, it is inevitable that individual values will differ among members and that society might show a trend toward a diversified esthetic sense. Nevertheless, the success or failure of the corporation is postulated on efficiency. Thus the "shared values" in broadest outline held by the many individual members living in a diversified environment are a necessary common denominator for the individual values in the corporation.
The shared values among IAC colleagues are "shared integrity, pro-active innovation, single-minded devotion and customer service." The starting point is introspection about "shared integrity," moving through "pro-active innovation" and "single-minded devotion" to arrive at the final goal, "customer service." These shared values include also the method of repaying the "shared integrity and customer service" produced by corporation performance and the ways in which the corporation "pro-actively innovates and single-mindedly devotes itself" as it constantly raises the level of core competence in its own terms. Only by constantly improving the company's core competence can the time and space limitations of the individual be effectively surpassed and the realm of sustained-yield management be reached.
The "mission" is the corporation's most fundamental objective and represents the individual member's expectations and demands of the corporation. Correspondingly, "shared values" embody the corporation's expectations and demands of the individual member. Thus "mission" and "shared values" must be closely linked together and interdependent. The individual members' "shared values" must support the corporation's "mission" and the corporation's ultimate mission goal must support the individual members' shared values. At IAC "pro-active innovation" and "single-minded devotion" are conditions for "creating performance," while "benefiting people" is the basis for "shared integrity" and "customer service."