Business as a Force for Good?
My old university, The University of Edinburgh, has posted an article this week in its magazine ‘Edinburgh Friends’, called Business with purpose: creating leaders for social change
To phrase this as ‘business as a force for good’, as the article does, is already to weight the trial in favour of business before any of the evidence has been heard. It’s already to proclaim its point before any democratic accountability has begun.
We could, instead, phrase it as ‘how can we reduce the damage business does?’, which, from the start already takes a more critical perspective. Or ‘how can we constrain business?’ Or even more potently, ‘radically transforming business into a force for good.’ The imply that there is something deeply wrong with business, at its core, and that we need a thorough, wide spread and deep rooted re-evalution of what business is for . how it is organised and what effect it has on society and the environment.
Instead we get the half measure of ‘business as a force for good’ and therefore the underlying presumption that is already mostly is, but just needs a few bolts and screws re-done here and there. So we get quotes like this, from Alan Jope, a graduate who is now CEO at Unilever, which focus on how helping society is good for sales: “Our brands that operate on an explicit platform that is doing something for society or the planet are dramatically outperforming the brands in our portfolio that don’t have that sense of mission or purpose”. Shouldn’t helping society be done for its own sake, not as a way to increase sales?
Or from Sophie Mary, a recent marketing graduate, focusing on the ethic of marketing. She shows an interesting degree of awareness of the inherent problems of marketing, saying “It is a common belief that marketeers are the bad guys, the ones who created social anxieties and complexes just for the sake of making more profit.” But calling that a common belief is a bit like saying its just a mistaken cliché, rather than an empirically grounded observation of the actual role of most marketing. If as she notes most marketing folk ‘are now actively trying to do good’ then I note two key points: they are trying that, as decent human beings, against a basic business system which will very much pervert and defeat their efforts. So, why not turn your efforts to a criticism of the basic economic system that marketing is serving? That should not be avoided.
The best line here, I think, is from Sarah Ivory, Director of the Centre for Business, Climate Change and Sustainability who notes; “What would a just, sustainable, prosperous society look like? What indeed. That is what we need to be asking more, more deeply and more honestly. Part of that consideration has to be that the basic economic system of capitalism is inherently unsustainable, and most probably contributing to climate change in large and negative ways. That the way business operates within capitalism does more harm that good, to people, to us all. Therefore, fundamental change to a more sustainable system is needed. Not half-measures, which are better than nothing and sometimes very helpful, but leave the core of the problem un-touched.
The article says the key thing is to create ‘business with purpose’, but apart from the quote above does not go nearly deeply enough into what the purpose of business is or should be. The purpose is presently - and let’s be honest – to create profit, not to make a good society. And profit which is highly unevenly distributed between the people who do most of the work and the much smaller group who own the businesses. Plus the working situation of the business is organized, for the most part, in thoroughly undemocratic ways. This amounts to often a near dictatorship of the work place, with unions strongly dis-encouraged, and all types of rights at work decreased and weakened, right down to tightly regulated rules for toilet breaks and punishments for daring to not follow these draconian rules. Is that a system which is doing good for its staff? Doesn’t look like it to me.
And the title says ‘leaders for social change’ - this trendy focus on 'leaders' is, in itself, undemocratic. We need a future in which everyone is involved in making a good society and work place...not just the 'leaders', surely.
People who organise these leadership courses etc dont seem to focus on the basic structural elements going on in the very idea of their being leaders. It means everyone else, apart from that small percentage of leaders, is a follower, a subservient, a 'do what the leaders decide' robot....how democratic and empowering can it be when from 80% to 99% of people in a business are pushed down like that?
Sometimes these things say that a good leader needs to be accessible and listen to staff, to play their part in enabling others and improving society, etc... if that is the actual aim then why not make ALL staff equal? Why not make the business a workers cooperative in which every single member of staff gets an equal say in how the organisation is run, what it produces, how it connects to the wider community and environment...and in how the profits are shared.
THAT is what a really progressive work place and society would involve. That is how business could actually be changed into a force for good. Let’s not kid ourselves that anything less than that means all we are focusing on is actually ‘how can we reduce the damage business does?’
Is that all we are capable of?
My old university, The University of Edinburgh, has posted an article this week in its magazine ‘Edinburgh Friends’, called Business with purpose: creating leaders for social change
To phrase this as ‘business as a force for good’, as the article does, is already to weight the trial in favour of business before any of the evidence has been heard. It’s already to proclaim its point before any democratic accountability has begun.
We could, instead, phrase it as ‘how can we reduce the damage business does?’, which, from the start already takes a more critical perspective. Or ‘how can we constrain business?’ Or even more potently, ‘radically transforming business into a force for good.’ The imply that there is something deeply wrong with business, at its core, and that we need a thorough, wide spread and deep rooted re-evalution of what business is for . how it is organised and what effect it has on society and the environment.
Instead we get the half measure of ‘business as a force for good’ and therefore the underlying presumption that is already mostly is, but just needs a few bolts and screws re-done here and there. So we get quotes like this, from Alan Jope, a graduate who is now CEO at Unilever, which focus on how helping society is good for sales: “Our brands that operate on an explicit platform that is doing something for society or the planet are dramatically outperforming the brands in our portfolio that don’t have that sense of mission or purpose”. Shouldn’t helping society be done for its own sake, not as a way to increase sales?
Or from Sophie Mary, a recent marketing graduate, focusing on the ethic of marketing. She shows an interesting degree of awareness of the inherent problems of marketing, saying “It is a common belief that marketeers are the bad guys, the ones who created social anxieties and complexes just for the sake of making more profit.” But calling that a common belief is a bit like saying its just a mistaken cliché, rather than an empirically grounded observation of the actual role of most marketing. If as she notes most marketing folk ‘are now actively trying to do good’ then I note two key points: they are trying that, as decent human beings, against a basic business system which will very much pervert and defeat their efforts. So, why not turn your efforts to a criticism of the basic economic system that marketing is serving? That should not be avoided.
The best line here, I think, is from Sarah Ivory, Director of the Centre for Business, Climate Change and Sustainability who notes; “What would a just, sustainable, prosperous society look like? What indeed. That is what we need to be asking more, more deeply and more honestly. Part of that consideration has to be that the basic economic system of capitalism is inherently unsustainable, and most probably contributing to climate change in large and negative ways. That the way business operates within capitalism does more harm that good, to people, to us all. Therefore, fundamental change to a more sustainable system is needed. Not half-measures, which are better than nothing and sometimes very helpful, but leave the core of the problem un-touched.
The article says the key thing is to create ‘business with purpose’, but apart from the quote above does not go nearly deeply enough into what the purpose of business is or should be. The purpose is presently - and let’s be honest – to create profit, not to make a good society. And profit which is highly unevenly distributed between the people who do most of the work and the much smaller group who own the businesses. Plus the working situation of the business is organized, for the most part, in thoroughly undemocratic ways. This amounts to often a near dictatorship of the work place, with unions strongly dis-encouraged, and all types of rights at work decreased and weakened, right down to tightly regulated rules for toilet breaks and punishments for daring to not follow these draconian rules. Is that a system which is doing good for its staff? Doesn’t look like it to me.
And the title says ‘leaders for social change’ - this trendy focus on 'leaders' is, in itself, undemocratic. We need a future in which everyone is involved in making a good society and work place...not just the 'leaders', surely.
People who organise these leadership courses etc dont seem to focus on the basic structural elements going on in the very idea of their being leaders. It means everyone else, apart from that small percentage of leaders, is a follower, a subservient, a 'do what the leaders decide' robot....how democratic and empowering can it be when from 80% to 99% of people in a business are pushed down like that?
Sometimes these things say that a good leader needs to be accessible and listen to staff, to play their part in enabling others and improving society, etc... if that is the actual aim then why not make ALL staff equal? Why not make the business a workers cooperative in which every single member of staff gets an equal say in how the organisation is run, what it produces, how it connects to the wider community and environment...and in how the profits are shared.
THAT is what a really progressive work place and society would involve. That is how business could actually be changed into a force for good. Let’s not kid ourselves that anything less than that means all we are focusing on is actually ‘how can we reduce the damage business does?’
Is that all we are capable of?