Corporations aren’t inherently good or evil, they just go through different phases.

From banking to food, fashion to advertising, there’s no shortage of examples of how ugly, greedy and ruthless capitalism can become. Most of us just accept it as part of doing business. But did you ever really think about why companies go bad?

Of course, the story of corporations sacrificing their integrity for profit is as old as capitalism itself; very few corporations manage to maintain a clean reputation for their entire lifespan. The reality is that no company has ever been born either good or evil and stayed that way forever. Rather, most companies get caught up in an endless cycle.

So what does this cycle look like? Most companies move through predictable, successive stages of honesty, then efficiency, then deception and, ultimately, redemption – that is, if the business is fortunate enough to last that long.

In fact, many “bad companies” were actually industry leaders in their early days, but then lost sight of their clients’ interests somewhere along the way. A perfect example of this phenomenon is McDonald’s. Founded in 1950, the company’s motto was (believe it or not) “Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value.”

Yes, quality stood at the core of the company’s priorities, and it even drove the immediate success of the brand. Yet today, McDonald’s fights scandal after scandal, regularly sued by customers who blame hamburgers and French fries for their excessive weight.

What happened? Well, somewhere along the way, the company moved into the efficiency section of the cycle and pushed quality and service into the background.

Even so, most good companies are either still in their early stages and haven’t become twisted yet, or are old horses attempting to redeem a tattered public image.

Looking at things this way, we can see that McDonald’s might not be dead and buried just yet. It could yet turn its image around and revert to its once-forgotten focus on quality. In the following blinks, we’ll investigate the phases that companies go through more closely, starting with their virtuous beginnings.