If you are contemplating a job change in order to better facilitate your effort to live your faith at work, be sure to consider whether a prospective job is with a publicly-held or private company. The difference is important.
In any company, you can be a powerful influence to those around you, but each ownership arrangement has its own dynamic that will affect you. Owner expectations at publicly-held companies can be substantially different from the expectations of the owner of a private company.
At a publicly-held company, the expectations are fairly straightforward. People buy shares in a company in order to make more money. Many shares are owned through mutual funds and pension funds in such a way that the investor does not even know the specific companies his or her money is funding.
Someone who owns his or her own company, however, may have motives in addition to making money. They might want to promote a product or service they have a strong personal belief in. They may want to stimulate a local economy. They may simply be looking for something to occupy their time. The reasons are endless. Of course, they have to make money to stay in business for any length of time, but they will not experience the outside pressure to return a certain rate of profit like the publicly held company experiences.
Managers at publicly held companies know they are judged every quarter by their earnings. Earnings at public companies are highly scrutinized by analysts and others on a quarter by quarter basis. They not only have to make money, but they have to make more money than other investments posing similar levels of risk.
Both dynamics have advantages and disadvantages. Publicly held companies provide millions of jobs, most paying good wages with benefits. They produce good products and in some cases are highly innovative. They typically provide employees clear direction and opportunity for advancement. Private companies typically offer flexibility, opportunity to work in several areas of the company, and the opportunity to play a major role in the company fairly quickly. Some people feel insignificant at a big company, or they grow frustrated with narrow parameters on their job description. Employees at small companies sometimes feel they could make more money at a large company, and are sometimes frustrated by limited opportunity to advance in their careers.
I want to come back to this topic in future posts. If you have thoughts about the differences between working in public companies versus private, please share them by posting your comments. Thanks.
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