Yeah, but How Do You Define "Great"?

So, I've been reading this book, From Good to Great. I don't read a lot of books from the business section of the bookstore, but this one was recommended to me. Basically, the book looks at the transition point when companies moved from "good" companies to "great" companies (and stayed there).

I've been enjoying the book; I think it's given me some interesting ideas and thoughts. But I have this huge disconnect about the way that "great" was defined in terms of value to the stockholder. Again and again, to illustrate their points, they talk about the return on investing USD $1, and what the return on that dollar is over a largish period of time. One of their "Good to great" companies is Phillip Morris, fer example, and they don't seem remotely concerned with (what I consider to be) the huge problems of the tobacco industry.

In the introduction, the author said that stockholder return was the only truly objective easily-available measure, and that using anything else would be both subjective and would expose his personal biases. He promised to discuss some other factors, briefly, in the last chapter, so I hope he has something I can relate to.

It reminds me of when I was working for a company that did U.S. 401k products (what Canadians would call Defined Contribution Pension Plans). One of their investments was called the "Morally Responsible Fund". This was a fund for people who wanted to make ethical investments. When you looked deeper, the largest percentage of the fund's holdings was in Micro$oft. That was their definition of "Morally Responsible".