Proprietor

It is not difficult to understand that the proprietor is the all-in-all in his set-up. But this all-in-all terminology is a misnomer. A proprietor may puif. and pound or beat his breast to prove that the business belongs to him, but he is not the omnipotent being in his concern. Without the cooperation and devotion of his workers and employees, he is a nonentity. He, therefore, has to get this cooperation from his men. He has to give them enough encouragement and incentive to love their work and the concern for which they are working. 

The most coveted treasure in a man is his self-respect. If proper dignity is shown to the employee, almost anything may be got done through him. In like manner, force, compulsion and command are resented. The polite proprietor can get his empl'oyees to do many more things at much less cost.
The ownership attitude of the proprietor is a hurdle to the advancement of his business. It is not the price of artistry or handicraft at which he has to work all by himself but it is something to be built up with the assistance of his employees, his customers, in fact, everybody connected with his business. If he tries to spread the feeling around that he is the sole architect, there is little possibility that his business will expand. People may shun him, his employees may hate him and he may have no goodwill at all. To save his business from such dire fate and conse­quences, the proprietor of a concern should behave like one of the employees of the concern working side by side with his workers, his helpers, encourag­ing and inspiring them as and when opportunity arrives. He may be in the field, yet not in a romping manner but in an obscure and unknown sort of way. He has to depend on his employees, forgetting the image of the one-man show. Such a theory in busi­ness is not tenable because no matter how efficient a man may be, he cannot go on expanding his busi­ness without able deputies and workmen. If he has to build up his business securely, he has to under­stand the proper relationship between employer and employee. He will do a great wrong if he chides or rebukes an employee in public. If any corrections are to be made at all, these are to be made in private and never before others. The employees must feel themselves identified with the concern and-it is the employer who is responsible for encouraging their growth in this direction.