Our current economic and financial systems sanction obscene excesses at the expense of society. It’s easy and therapeutic to rant. It’s more helpful, but more challenging, to propose viable alternatives. In my last three blogs, I reviewed Hazel Henderson’s, Michael Moore’s, and David Korten’s thoughtful proposals on how to repair our economic and financial systems. We also need more responsible business models, like Benefit Corporations (B Corps).B Corps are a new kind of company which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.
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Was the financial crisis triggered by a unique combination of unusual circumstances, or was it the inevitable outcome of a decaying system? Noted futurist, author, and ecological economist, Hazel Henderson, declares that Wall Street has degenerated into a global casino, with a far too dominant influence on the global economy. She says it must be rehabilitated and suggests seven reforms that would be a good start.
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Too often, we wait for the people in charge to fix world problems. Why not? Isn’t that their role? Our hopes are raised when we see people with our point of view gain power, and then we are disappointed when they fail to live up to our expectations. The status quo inertia in the current political and economic systems is amazingly strong. When people with important titles fail to shake it up, we may wonder if mere mortals like us can possibly make a difference.
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Sustainability issues can be overwhelming, depressing, and almost traumatizing. At times we may feel powerless to make a difference. In The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of Powerlessness in the Global Economy, author Linda McQuaig provocatively suggests that helplessness is exactly what some large institutions want us to feel, so that they can get away with
solutions that are more in their interests than ours. She encourages us to take more personal responsibility for global sustainability challenges. The following three videos strongly support our capitalizing on our ripple effect.
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Employee volunteers are an important dimension of any company’s philanthropic efforts. When employees are engaged in a company’s social and environmental initiatives, people see that the company is more than a bank throwing money at random causes in an effort to buff up its image.
They see the company as made up of people who care about tough social and environmental issues. Its employees bring their talent, time, and energy to causes that they personally care about and which align with their company’s mission. Who would have thought that a surprise co-benefit of the company’s support for these projects is the volunteers’ higher level of engagement and productivity in the workplace?
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“People buy from people they trust.” That was a slogan we used in sales training at IBM. We used it to reinforce the human element of a customer-supplier transaction. No trust, no sale. There’s a similar dynamic in the relationship between employees and their companies.
If employees’ values resonate with their company’s values, and if they trust that their company genuinely cares about the same things they care about, then they are more energized and productive. A company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts signal what it cares about. Their co-benefit is that they seem to increase employee engagement.
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Wouldn’t it be great if we could show that companies which embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) reap financial rewards? Sustainability champions armed with this information would be welcomed by business leaders seeking new ways to get the most from their companies’ resources and efforts. Fortunately, the links between CSR efforts, employee engagement, and business results are becoming clearer.
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We need to relate our propositions to their business priorities, and show them that our recommendations will help them beat their competitors. By showing how sustainability-related strategies are helpful to key elements in their current business model, we gain their support and accelerate their adoption of sustainability-based approaches. We make sustainability relevant.
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HBR reprinted that article in its July-August 2008 issue in its “Best of HBR” series. By then, I was eight years into my next career as an author and speaker on the business relevance of sustainability-based strategies. I’m still impressed by how the service-profit chain provides a valuable web of interrelated business goals which sustainability-related strategies can help achieve better and faster. I am convinced that the credibility and effectiveness of sustainability champions is improved if we show how our suggested approaches contribute to the success of one or more links in the business value chain. This week, we’ll look at a few versions of the value chain, and conclude with a touchstone generic business version to add to sustainability champions’ toolkits.
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At the World CEO Forum in New Delhi, India, in February 2010, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) released its Vision 2050: The new agenda for business report. Pulling this together was not a trivial task. It was compiled over an 18-month period by 29 leading global companies who represent 14 industries. It reflects the combined efforts of CEOs and experts, and benefits from dialogues with over 200 companies and external stakeholders in some 20 countries. The effort was significant. So is its content, for four reasons.
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