BUSINESS ADVOCATES AND CORPORATE COPS: Core Values From Fad to Fact.

For partnerships to become something other than a fad, finance and other staff functions must be perceived as making a positive contribution to a company's business objectives.

"We respect the individual and believe that individuals who are treated with respect and given responsibility

This is more than a positive statement. It's a core value. Core values represent the beliefs and aspirations that are widely shared by managers and employees within a business, in functional areas such as finance, or throughout a company. Core values help define the corporate culture, and the corporate culture determines how people act inside the company.

The core value we mentioned belongs to MindSpring Enterprises. Its core values of partnership with employees, customers, and other businesses were born a few years ago when it was a small start-up. Those core values were reinforced in its recent merger with EarthLink, which made it the second largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the country.

"MindSpring is only the second ISP to show a profit," says CFO Juliet Reising. "Our frugal company culture, coupled with an environment that fosters individual autonomy and trust, results in a very effective and low-cost operating structure," she adds.

Reising says the company has been able to take recent acquisitions whose operations weren't profitable and adapt them to MindSpring's profitable business model almost immediately. "This would not be possible without the company 'living' the core values and beliefs" she concludes.

MindSpring offers a good example of the current management trend toward "partnership." Partners join together to accomplish common objectives. They are responsible for contributing individual skills and expertise to the management team and working in close cooperation with other team members.

To many financial organizations, partnership is an alien concept. For years, the role of financial executives and their organizations was discussed in terms of function. Little attention was paid to how a company's management philosophy and corporate culture might affect the financial organization. The prevalent attitude was: "We provide an independent financial review of the business operations. We do not need to get involved in the business."