Corporations and Businesses

Today’s corporations and businesses have similar problems compared to current government systems. Often the customer doesn't have any choices and high-power executives amass wealth, while providing over-priced products and services that lack features that customers want. The term ‘product’ here also includes services (anything that a customer pays for). If the table below mentions ‘product’ it also implies ‘services’.

Operation of Corporations and Businesses
Current	Proposed
Very few people are involved in decision making for any aspect of the operations, such as product design and compensation.	Any civilian, customer or employee can choose to be involved in decision making.
Product lacks features that customers want but company does not care.	Products has all the features that people want.
Some products malfunction due to unreliable design but nothing is done about it.	Problems with products are investigated quickly and corrective measures are taken for existing and new products.
When an organization grows big or powerful enough and people start depending on it to meet their needs, the organization starts exploiting their customers, showing predatory and manipulative behaviors and holding them hostage by increasing prices, providing sub-standard products/services and attempting to subdue competitors. The reason again is that profits have a higher priority than customer satisfaction.	The growth of the company has no detrimental effect on customer satisfaction or their ability to produce high-quality products.
A few individuals at the top amass wealth.	There is no need of high-paid high-level executives. Customers and employees are directly involved in high-level decision making.
Product can be cheaper but the true cost of the product is kept secret from the customer.	True cost is known to the customer. Customer price is continuously adjusted to be as low as possible.
No one cares about customer feedback.	There is a strong connection between the customer and the product. Feedback is easy to transfer from customer to the product designers and is a crucial part of product/service development and improvement.
Lack of transparency and accountability.	There is full accountability and transparency.
The primary objective of the corporation is profit and primary objective of employees is to preserve their jobs.	The primary motive of the corporation and of any employee is customer satisfaction. Consumers should win since they’re the ones paying for the product.
Incompetent people often end up in positions of power and influence.	Knowledge and competency determines who has control over what happens. There are no ‘protected’ positions of power at any level.
A lot of money is spent on advertising in different media. False advertising is common.	Advertising is not necessary. Other less intrusive alternatives exist to inform the customer of the product. False advertising has no purpose. The customer is fully informed of all details about the product.
Product recyclability is not a priority.	Product recyclability has a high priority. Product design is adjusted for maximum reuse and recyclability.
Excess profits help people become more rich.	Excess profits help reduce product cost, develop new products and improve business operations.
Business is created and initially financed by people who later take away large portions of company profits that they didn’t work for.	Business is created and financed by the consumers. Some of this already happens to some extent on websites like KickStarter. People who take initiative and create businesses can be compensated in alternate ways which are still rewarding.

So we can see the great need for a different way of doing things for both government systems and for corporations. There are many ways in which the above goals can be achieved and there are many stages of success. We can either have new kinds of businesses or we can change the way existing businesses work. There may never be an ideal situation but improvements can always be made.

Javul Business Model

In today’s world there’s a problem with most businesses. When they get big and the masses start depending on them, they start changing their services or products in an attempt to maximize profits or maintain monopolies ignoring customer satisfaction. This is actually their only primary goal, whether they are big or small. This model of business has to stop existing. We do not need businesses that exploit people and increase the gap between the rich and the average civilian.

A business that is favoured by Javul has certain characteristics. Its power structure is dynamic, open, accountable, resistant to corruption and misuse of power and finances. Its primary motive is customer satisfaction, not profit maximization or maintaining monopolies. All or most of its extra profits go to the people who do actual work in the company, lowering the cost of products/services and to new/existing product/service development. Javul does not favour companies where a few individuals at the top amass wealth. Therefore the compensation structure at a Javul-favoured company would be more flat compared to compensation in typical companies we find in the world today. An example is of certain countries that limit CEO pay. Compensation would vary depending on the quality of the work performed, the skills needed for the job and the difficulty level etc.

Many successes businesses are started by a few driven, ambitious people who recognize a need in society and create a successful method to meet that need. This can also be done by groups of people working together. To decrease reliance on high-level and high-paid executives, businesses can operate on a Javul model which gives power to the smartest ideas in the company. These ideas and business strategies can be given by anyone working in the company, therefore everyone has a voice and an opportunity to make a difference.

Javul-favoured businesses listen to their customers and they have a Unit presence on the Javul platform that shows their strong commitment to customer satisfaction. They work hard to resolve the most important issues that customers want taken care of.

Of all companies with traditional business models, Google seems to be a company that cares a lot about not upsetting its users although sometimes even they make mistakes (example).

To keep companies accountable, a history of bad decisions made by them should be kept so we can see how important it is to replace the products and services of that company by an open-source community business model.

Comparing Modes of Operation

Let’s take the examples of a few businesses and examine how they work currently and how they would work in a better scenario.

Facebook (current model)	Facebook (proposed model)
Idea was conceived by a single person who was the owner of the company who also funds the initial development of the business.	Idea is conceived by groups of people and shared with everyone and publicly funded. Employees of the company and the consumers own the company.
Extra profits cause the owner’s net worth to be 50 billion dollars.	There is no accumulation of excess wealth anywhere. Extra profits are used to reduce the number of ads and to create features that users want.
Annoying ads generate excess profits.	The level of ads is continuously adjusted and kept to a minimum, only used to finance IT webhosting and development costs.
The focus is on monetization.	The focus is on customer satisfaction.
True cost of maintaining the company is kept secret from everyone.	True cost is known to everyone.
Disrespecting users and their data (source)	User data is treated the way the users want it to be treated, with respect.

Companies that are only based on the online model are the most easiest to replicate. Real-life companies that provide real-life services and products are harder to deal with but improvements can still be made to various degrees using Javul.

External Links

• Mondragon - "corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. (A worker cooperative is a cooperative that is owned and self-managed by its workers.)"