Today, I took part in the EABIS Conference “From Corporate Responsibility to Sustainable Business” in Nottingham, and want to share some thoughts.
I personally think we should go beyond the concept of Sustainable Business and talk about “Inclusive Business”: business with a wider positive impact for all. Inclusive business, most probably, can only be values based and values driven. But in order to talk seriously about inclusive business, we have to touch the prevailing paradigm. As someone said: we have squeezed the Anglo Saxon paradigm out on responsibility for what it has, and it was not enough. Are we, business schools and business people, willing to explore a more inclusive paradigm ?
A little side remark: I feel that businesses have taken over from the business schools in this matter. Business Schools no longer have the prerogative to create knowledge in this field. That is not bad perse, but it reinforces the necessity of much stronger cooperation between Schools and companies. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is just one example of this thought leadership.
As usual, the discussion went on about profit. But profit is not the problem, much profit is not the problem either. The problem is that business often is not inclusive. The driver is the inclusiveness, the values based focus, and not the profit. But profit we need. And that brings us to the discussion about capitalism. Many would like to add something nice to capitalism (responsible capitalism, social capitalism, or whatever). For me, capitalism has everything to do with the ownerships question, and then we should not even talk about capitalism anymore (as Mintzberg says: beyond Smith and Marx). The discussionabout capitalism is a historic one. Today, it is about the development of more innovative forms of inclusive business, like cooperatives (just to name one, already very old, form), community owned businesses, employee owned businesses.
Who is in charge? We. We, business schools and businesses alike, should innovate our thinking in order to create social innovation and to eradicate poverty, inequality and exclusivity. A breakdown in the “social ecology” would be really dangerous, and the tremendous inequalities in the world is such a potential time bomb.
Dipak Jain, the dean of Insead, feels that inequality is the real danger today. We need to try and come up with a plan that is benefiting for “all”. That focus forces us to train our students differently. We should pay attention to “Reflection” (where am I, what am I doing, where is my contribution), “Renewal” (how can I grow beyond myself), “Responsibility” (on individual level, and that is what a leader is all about).
Management students should know that they are a happy few in the world and by having this opportunity to study they take a responsibility on them that goes beyond themselves.
