Today I read an email from a friend of mine, telling me that he has quit his job in financial industry and moved to helping his family business. I am so surprised by this news! But what surprises me most is the social enterprise nature of his family business. When I read through the email, I saw a paragraph in Italic saying that all revenue received deducting basic costs and expenses is used to fund a charity. Wait a minute, ALL REVENUE deducting costs and expenses!? This is crazy! For years I have been reading a lot about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social enterprise, and I summarize two ways businesses can contribute what they earn back to society – Give and Help. But first and foremost, why should businesses contribute what they earn? Traditional Business Concept In all your traditional Economics 101 or Business 101 classes, you are told that human are greedy and a company is to maximize profit to shareholders (although they also teach you not to ignore other stakeholders, you hardly find a textbook teaching you to maximize other stakeholders profit). This point of view has been widely accepted for decades as no doubt that profit shareholders essentially is the major motivation to drive people work harder and create more to help the world moving forward (supposedly). At the end of the day who doesnt want to live a better life (at least materially)? Company Means... Fortunately, our desires are never limited. More and more people now believe a company should mean more than profit generation and job creation. It should also mean an agent which creates value, takes monetary profit, and then contributes back to the society. I have no idea why and when people started to have this thought but it is what they think now and it is especially true for Generation Y / Z (or just whatever generation after them). If you dont contribute, you will be out of this game soon as the world will soon be ruled by Generation Y & Z (of course the world is always ruled by God, and YES, God wants you to help poor people). So you may ask, what should a company contribute? Money? Yes, but not only in the old way. Give & Help The traditional way of contribution is the “Give” I mentioned earlier. It is easy to understand by the obvious meaning of this word. A company earns profit, and donates what she earns to charities – Simple and effective win-win: Company earns goodwill, charities get money to help people in need. This is also the way my friends family business is using. I totally agree with this way (though I still dont agree a company should simply give ALL profit to charity as it is definitely not sustainable). The other way of doing it is “Help”, which is adopted by increasingly number of businesses nowadays. Here we are not just saying encouraging staff to participate volunteering, we are talking about creating a new business model in order to help the low skill workers / handicapped people to work respectfully, while the company can still earn money for shareholders. Again, a win-win situation. All in all, if business owners / shareholders consider more about other people in this world, I am sure there will be more ways to achieve win-win situation. I think this is a very good topic and I just hope more people will think about it and have discussion on it. I am going to write more about this topic in future, you feedback and support are mostly welcome. Leviticus 19:9-10 And when you get in the grain from your land, do not let all the grain be cut from the edges of the field, or take up what has been dropped on the earth after the getting in of the grain. And do not take all the grapes from your vine-garden, or the fruit dropped on the earth; let the poor man, and the man from another country, have these: I am the Lord your God. i-LoveBirdy/our-mission/
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 01:38:04 +0000
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