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Should you be optimistic about business leader’s recent support for corporate social responsibility?
YES!
Words have less direct impact than action, but they are a tool with positive, lingering impact. When I walk by a park, I watch the children playing there, if even for a second. I’ll laugh at a game of tag or smile at a grinning toddler on a swing, shooting his legs up towards the clouds. For the rest of the day, those snapshots inspire me. The effect comes from my brain processing the youthful image together with everything else I encounter that day. Each impression reminds me I’m a Dad, as well as an economist and business consultant.
Businesspeople are less inspiring than children playing. However, their words can be indelible. Following a similarly supportive statement from the Business Roundtable, the Financial Times published the following From the Editor Lionel Barber about corporate social responsibility:
The Financial Times believes in free enterprise capitalism. It is the foundation for the creation of wealth which provides more jobs, more money and more taxes.
The liberal capitalist model has delivered peace, prosperity and technological progress for the past 50 years, dramatically reducing poverty and raising living standards throughout the world.
But, in the decade since the global financial crisis, the model has come under strain, particularly the focus on maximising profits and shareholder value. These principles of good business are necessary but not sufficient.
The long-term health of free enterprise capitalism will depend on delivering profit with purpose. Companies will come to understand that this combination serves their self-interest as well as their customers and employees. Without change, the prescription risks being far more painful.
Free enterprise capitalism has shown a remarkable capacity to reinvent itself. At times, as the historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wisely noted, it is necessary to reform in order to preserve. Today, the world has reached that moment. It is time for a reset. [Emphasis added.]
You must be optimistic upon hearing so powerful a call to action.
Find a way to reset yourself during your day. Watch a child playing the next time you pass a park. Carry that image– and the innocent insight it delivers– with you to work. And if you struggle to give that vision meaning, think of Lionel Barber’s uplifting words.
Do you feel inspired by what you and your work deliver society? Is there some small step, or strategic re-think, you can take to enhance outcomes?
Please share your thoughts in the comments or by sending me an email: info@RodWallacePhD.Com.
Our society cannot just survive. For the sake of our children, it must thrive.
Rod
Dr. Rod Wallace is an economist, consultant, and speaker who helps businesses make more money by solving society’s problems. A Fulbright Fellow, he has led multi-organization billion-dollar initiatives worldwide and partnered with a Silicon Valley pioneer to explore the impact of Artificial Intelligence on society.
Rod speaks about how to integrate social responsibility into business to maximize profit and purpose. He highlights digital technology’s impact on society and the strategies and tools with which business can solve our big, systemic problems.
Contact Rod at info@RodWallacePhD.com.
AI is and will change the availability of jobs for most sectors of society. We need to be prepared to support these individuals through this process. Andrew Yang’s book, The War on Normal People, is well worth the investment of time to understand what is coming and has come in some parts of the US.