The Quality Quotient or How I Made the World a Better Place

This satirical novel recounts the effect on human and corporate behaviour of a brand new metric: a quotient that ranks companies not on share price or earnings per share or return on capital invested but on care, compassion and social responsibility. Companies come to see that having a high Bevill Quotient gives them competitive advantage. No one is allowed to know the underlying factors that make up this quotient: as Anthony Bevill, its author, is quick to point out, if the factors were known, they would be open to manipulation. So companies pay more attention to diversity in the workplace, playing fields for employees, care in the transportation of hazardous wastes, charitable contributions - and anything else they think might earn them a high Bevill Quotient score. Not only companies but ethical investment funds, charities and eventually even the government itself compete to be ranked highly for `caring'. How the Bevill Quotient came about, through a succession of mishaps and disasters, and its effects on business and society, is narrated in the first person by Anthony Bevill himself: a struggling, self-deluding no-hoper who finds himself becoming a high-profile, high-earning proprietor of a significant market research company whose quotient is in increasing demand. In fact, of course, his quotient has no real basis in quantifiable fact; the numbers he issues and apportions to his paying clients are largely inventions of his own. He justifies this deception on the grounds that the existence of his quotient prompts all companies and organisations to be more thoughtful, caring and generous; which is indeed the case. Hence How I Made the World a Better Place. Much of the tension in the story stems from the growing influence of the Bevill Quotient and the growing sense that its totally spurious basis is bound to be eventually uncovered. One of the very few people to have read this book in manuscript wrote: `I haven't enjoyed a novel for a long time as much as I have this - and that's not for the want of reading novels. It's a very serious idea, which is possibly why I laughed so much: an original idea, beautifully developed and tricked.' I quote this comment because it sums up exactly what I set out to write and how I hope others will find it.