Determinants of Profits: Modern and Indian Views

Abstract

Profit is the most popular term in the world and it even divided the mankind into two groups namely profit-driven capitalists and the non-profit welfare driven socialists. It can even be said that the whole world is driven by profit and not by the mankind. The economic literature defined profit variously and identified the determinants of profits as monopoly power or monopoly conditions of market, business power, entrepreneurial service or functions, the difference between ex-post returns over the ex-ante returns, the residue, the difference between revenue and costs, due to efficiency, innovation, uncertainty, inflation, changes in the economy, wrong value system, wages, etc. This paper attempts to present the determinants or rather obstructions to profit, a profit model, implications for corporate social responsibility and a corporate social responsibility index of public welfare based on an Indian Management Thought – The Arthasastra claimed to date from 321-296 BC. Yet they seem to be relevant to the word even today.