Fred Wentzel at the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing publishes a fascinating newsletter, which he calls "Sustainable Manufacturing News." He aggregates some always interesting content in this newsletter, and sometimes it is hard to decide which is the most interesting or meaningful article.
In this morning's edition, he aggregates an article by Laura Vanderkam originally published in Fortune on 6-12:
What businesses owe the world: Then and now
(FORTUNE – Laura Vanderkam: 6-12-13) What is the role of a corporation? To make money, or something else?
It's a heady debate these days, with the rise of "Benefit Corporations" -- a new class of corporation that requires a positive impact on society -- and calls for companies to police their supply chains in the wake of April's deadly factory collapse in Bangladesh.
But it's not a new debate. Forty years ago this month, in the June 1973 issue of Fortune, Gilbert Burck wrote about The Hazards of Corporate Responsibility. On one side, he quoted Milton Friedman, arguing that the purpose of a business was to maximize profit rather than, in Burck's words, "tackle social problems with money belonging to other people (i.e. their stockholders)."
As Friedman said, "No businessman has money to spend on social responsibility unless he has monopoly power. Any businessman engaged in social responsibility ought to be immediately slapped with an antitrust suit."
On the other side of this yawning chasm you had idealists, who "tend to extreme forms of self-righteousness," Burck wrote. In addition to "mere compliance with the law, say the advocates, business should actively initiate measures to abate pollution, to expand minority rights, and in general to be an exemplary citizen, and should cheerfully accept all the costs associated with this good citizenship."
But perhaps, Fortune hinted, there was a third way; a recognition that things termed social responsibility might not just translate into money out the door. They could impact, in their own way, the bottom line of businesses operating in a real and often messy world. Forty years later, looking at some of the companies mentioned in Burck's piece and the broader state of corporate social responsibility, this view seems to have won out.
Vanderkam's article continues here: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/12/corporate-social-responsibility/
I recommend it as an excellent read.
Another article that Fred aggregated today is by James Murray, and was originally published in BusinessGreen on 6-13:
Branson and Zeitz launch 'Plan B for Business'
Sir Richard Branson and Kering director Jochen Zeitz have today launched a major non-profit group, dubbed The B Team, with the view to promoting a new set of progressive business values that "prioritize people and planet alongside profit.”
The group brings together a host of high profile business and political leaders, including Arianna Huffington, Unilever's Paul Polman, Ratan Tata of the Tata Group, President of the United Nations Foundation Kathy Calvin, and former Irish President Mary Robinson. These so-called "B Leaders" have pledged to work on the development of a "Plan B for business" that seeks to address the growing challenges businesses and societies face, such as high unemployment, global inequality and the unsustainable use of natural resources.
I would recommend it as an excellent read, except that it is behind an extremely expensive pay wall. So here's an article from The Guardian instead: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/richard-branson-jochen-zeitz-b-team
Seems to me that the entire question of corporate responsiblity is tied in with the concept that sustainability and corporate responsibility can be profitable-- should be profitable. People in the electronics manufacturing and paper making industries have proven that to be the case for nearly fifty years now, so the question is why aren't all corporations doing it?
