I have always been fascinated by the conflict in U.S. business between long-term organizational cultivation and making a quick buck. Today, the dominant philosophy is the quick buck or the overnight millionaire, and I suspect that the incentives are structural, which is a subject for another time. The result, however, of this mindset is not pretty: infrastructure decay, downsizing, unemployment, underemployment, and the rise in stress-related disorders such as depression and eating disorders, all forms of externalization of costs by corporations pressured to maintain the bottom line and the price of their stock.

It was therefore of particular interest that one European business school teaches its students how to run a business for the long haul, the University of Navarre's business school, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa (ISCE). The school was established by Opus Dei, of Da Vinci Code notoriety.

ISCE is ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of The Economist Group) as the number one business school in the world. It's philosophy is in many respects the opposite of the U.S. model. Loyal employees are the most valuable asset of a firm. Turnover is costly. Employees are people, not merely "resources." Running a business ought to be for the long term and not the quick buck. Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, writes:

Why a caring culture makes sense for IESE is pretty apparent: Emphasizing the long term, the school is interested in the personal transformation of its students and building closer relationships with them, and is willing to make the difficult economic trade-offs to convert noble sentiments into reality.

The school caps enrollment in its senior-level programs at 35 students, a remarkably low figure compared with most American schools. Forty percent of the alumni are alumni association members, even though Europe has less of a tradition of private philanthropy and provides fewer tax advantages for giving.

There are big lessons in this for U.S. companies, which have long resisted allowing more of their workers' lives inside their boundaries. Our CEOs pay lip service to the importance of both customer and employee loyalty, but they frequently overlook the importance of personal relationships and connections, and rarely consider the idea of doing more for people than what is formally expected.

Take, for instance, U.K.-based Innovation Group, a 1,000-employee, publicly held insurance software company. During the 1990s, executive board member Ed Ossie rebuilt MTW - now a subsidiary - increasing sales from $8 million to more than $40 million in about four years.

During this same time, annual employee turnover fell from an industry-typical 30 percent to just 4 percent. Ossie credits much of that to a culture of community he built among employees.

—Management Tips from Opus Dei (CNNMoney.com)

Although companies can succeed in the present monetary, economic and regulatory climate by long-term thinking, the pressure and temptations of our contemporary business culture make it very difficult for a CEO to do so. This situation can only be remedied by structural change that eliminates the incentives to make a quick buck and rewards management that builds an organization for the long-term.

Wikipedia on ISCE