It's funny: the profit thing keeps being parroted here of all places, Y Combinator, when we know all too well that there are scads of businesses, especially today, that are bleeding millions and hemorrhaging cash, just to disrupt an industry sector, just to amass assets/user data, or just to amass a customer base and get sold off.
So no, profit is not a universal motive. But it's a popular one; if you have a conventional business and you expect to stay solvent year-over-year, then you make profits, you stay in the black, yes? Nobody can prognosticate when the lean years will come, and so you watch that bottom line and keep as much cushion as possible, to ride out a bad year or two.
Furthermore, if a business is competing with other businesses, that's going to moderate the profit motive with market share and other considerations. But I would say that publicly-traded companies have the strongest impetus to profit and satisfy shareholders. The publicly-traded space is far more constrained than other businesses or entities, such as charities, public interest groups, political action, NGOs, etc.
So no, profit is not a universal motive. But it's a popular one; if you have a conventional business and you expect to stay solvent year-over-year, then you make profits, you stay in the black, yes? Nobody can prognosticate when the lean years will come, and so you watch that bottom line and keep as much cushion as possible, to ride out a bad year or two.
Furthermore, if a business is competing with other businesses, that's going to moderate the profit motive with market share and other considerations. But I would say that publicly-traded companies have the strongest impetus to profit and satisfy shareholders. The publicly-traded space is far more constrained than other businesses or entities, such as charities, public interest groups, political action, NGOs, etc.