Article by Paramantapa Dasgupta

“Profit Maximization”…… Is the only way out?

By Paramantapa Dasgupta

As per wikipedia, Profit Maximisation can be defined as “…. the process by which a firm determines the price and output level that returns the greatest profit. There are several approaches to this problem. The total revenue — total cost method relies on the fact that profit equals revenue minus cost, and the marginal revenue — marginal cost method is based on the fact that total profit in a perfectly competitive market reaches its maximum point where marginal revenue equals marginal cost.” Untill recently, it was generally assumed that the rational beheaviour of a firm or an entreprenuer was to maximize profits. And definitely that profit was money profit.However, the profit maximisation hypothesis has been challenged recently and other than profit maximisation, various alternative optimization procedures have been proposed. Following are a couple of those variants:1. Sales Maximisation Hypothesis2. Constrained Revenue Maximisation Hypothesis3. Secure Profit Maximisation Hypothsis4. Growth Maximisation Hypothesis5. Staff Maximisation Hypothesis6. Profit Maximisation ( Through Mark-Up Price Approach)7. Utility Maximisation Hypothesis of a Firm.

Before going further deep into those tough words, lets take some fresh oxygen and get an overall idea of the challenges against the age old Profit Maximisation Hypothesis. In the analysis of the equilibrium of a firm, the major assumption is that the entreprenuer aims at maximisation of his profits. So it’s nothing but a rational beheaviour and its just like the rationality of a consumer is to maximisation of his utility or satisfaction. At this point, you may ask, ” If Profit Maximisation is a rational beheaviour of the entreprenuer, then why should one find out the other alternative ways to maximise Sales, Growth, Utility…and all other craps???” Yes, you are right. But partially. Why ? Lets take a closer look around.

It should be carefully seen, what does the entreprenuer suppose to maximise under Profit Maximisation principle. An entreprenuer’s income consists of two elements. A. He gets wages for his job of routine management and overall supervision which he is supposed to pay himself.B. He gets what is left after meeting all the explicit and implicit costs( even including his own wages).The great economist, Marshall described the business owner’s wages of management and supervision as normal profit and the residual income as super normal profit. This means normal profits are the minimum income which the business owner must get in order to stay in a business. So, from another angle, normal profits are nothing but a kind of cost to the firm or may be a special kind of wages, which entrepreneur pays himself. Now, if we want to maximise the profit of the firm, its not the normal profit ( as its nothing but a cost) but the super normal profit.

Ok, now it has become a bit complicated. What does the owner maximise ? Normal profit? No.. its Super normal profit. Agreed.Now let us move forward. Here the question is, how far is it true that the owner of the firm always runs after maximising super normal profit ? If you think deeply, you will find out maximising super normal profit is nothing but a short-term activity, in long run, entreprenuers rather want to maximise a ” steady flow of profits” or a “secure profit”. It’s true that the Profit Maximisation idea is valid for explaining the beheaviour of the firm which is working under perfect competition. In that case if firms get normal profit, they feel they are happy. But in case of oligopolistic market nature, where the number of firms are not so huge, in that case the owners of the firm have to think about how to maximise secure profit, not super normal profit. The same thing may also happen in monopolistic competition as well. According to Prof.Rothschild, in oligopolistic nature of business, profit maximising assmuption is no longer sufficient. He asserts ” Here is both the desire for achieving a secure position as well as the power to act on his desire”.

So, we started with Profit Maximisation…then Supernormal Profit Maximisation..and after that Secure Profit Maximisation…not a bad idea. But, whats next?

As satisfaction or utility is the ultimate end which an individual aspires to get, therefore emenent economists like Prof. Benjamin Higgins, Prof. Reder, Prof. Tibor Scitovsky have rightly argued that in case of small unincorporated business firms, the entreprenuer who actually acts as the owner-manager of the firm, he may pursue the objective of maximising utility other than maximisation of profit. For him, leisure may appear as an alternative to making money profit. It’s very much true that profit maximisation does not guarantee utility or satisfaction maximisation. The more activity or work put in by the entreprenuer will mean the less leisure he will be able to enjoy. The preference for leisure must be incorporated into the analysis of an entrepreneur who is supposed to maximise his utility and this again shows the Profit maximisation may not be the sinle goal of a firm.

Great!!! So time onwards we will have to consider Utility Maximisation also..!!!

Now, let us shift our focus from entreprenuer driven business model to manager driven business model incorporated by the global business giants. Here the total business set up is broken into small geographic or functioanl division and the entreprenuer keeps managers for each and every division. In reality, the corporate managers try to maximise the rate of growth of output or toatal sales revenue rather than maximising profit. Because they don’t know anything about the global movement of the company. Most of the cases their salaries are related to the sales revenue and for this they put their best efforts to maximise the sales revenue. Though, now a days, mostly the maximisation of sales revenue is pursued by the managers, subject to the constraint of minimum profits which they must obtain for the owners ( share holders). I don’t want to make this proposition more complicated by taking the example of Employee Stock Option plans where the managers may think themselves as the share holders and they go for both Sales Revenue Maximisation ( for their performance related salaries) and Super Normal Profit Maximisation ( to earn more money from the sompany shares). Do you want to take another look into this ? There is a notion that the corporate managers aim at achieveing satisfactory rate of profits rather than maximising profits. According to this hypothesis, one can say that the corporate managers set a minimum standard of performance and that can be described as the minimum aspiration level. And in the day by day operation, a manager always wants to optimise this minimum aspiration level, not to maximise profit.Enough of taking and making hypothesis. Lets take an example of one empirical study. This was done by the famous Oxford economists, Prof. Hall and Prof. Hitch. They interviwed around forty entreprenuers on pricing policy. From their empirical study, they have come down to a conclusion that the businessmen do not try to maximise profit by equating marginal cost with marginal revenue, which they seldom know. According to Prof. Hall and Hitch, businessmen charge prices to cover their avarage cost of production and so they add profit mark-up to fix the prices of their products. And most of the time the busienssmen aim to maximise the mark up, and not the profit, directly.

In the present days, inside the corporate giants, there is a seperation in the outlook of managing business between ownership managers (i.e. share holders) and business managers. Specifically for the business managers there is a trade-off between sales maximisation and maximisation of personal utility or leisure. And to cover up the trade off,recruting more sub-ordiante staff is the one of the best practices. Which leads to another activity i.e. staff maximisation. If one business manager recruits more sub ordinates so he can distribute his work load amongst them so to some extent he may optimise his personal utility or leisure. On the other hand recruting new a staff will increase the sales oriented revenue stream so it will maximise sales but may not maximise profit.

So, in this way we can come to a conclusion that, in today’s era, profit maximisation may not be the best business optimisation process. There are many other proven optimising factors like sales, mark up price, staff, utility, growth, secure profits etc.