People engagement was compromised before recession so organisations could enjoy short term financial success

Hutton claims: "People engagement, innovation, cultivation of customers - all were compromised to reach the goal perceived as the most important: short-term financial success.

"Managers became asset sweaters and target achievers instead of business builders and people engagers.

"Yet abundant evidence demonstrates that profits derive from the capacity to maintain the promise of the quality and integrity of a business offer, along with a commitment to continuously upgrade and innovate over
time."

In his essay The Landscape of Tough Times, Hutton welcomes growing recognition that the credit boom and asset price bubble allowed many companies to dodge fundamental issues about how to generate sustainable wealth.

In relentlessly pursuing the overriding business target of boosting short-term profits by whatever means possible, he claims that "Company boards were part bullied, part in thrall and part anxious to join the party by the demands, glamour and extravagant rewards offered by Big Finance."
 
Hutton adds: "Once the capacity is inverted so that a business' purpose is purely profit, this undermines a company's capabilities. It turns people into profit automata; resulting in all processes being valued only to the extent they turn a profit. This undermines not only companies, but the very idea of capitalism itself."

Hutton is HR magazine's latest columnist and his first article will be included in the January issue of the magazine.