Excited to have got 3 more B Corps over the line this week! Immensely proud to have supported these incredible purpose-driven companies through the certification process.
CSR, ESG, SDG, SBTi, GRI, TCFD. . . faced with an alphabet soup of options (and increasingly, requirements) it can be baffling for companies to measure, manage and talk about their impact on people and planet.
The B Corp framework offers a clear, structured response to all that pressure and crucially brings business back to its original purpose which was to have SOME FORM OF BENEFIT WITHIN SOCIETY.
Did it all go wrong in the 1950s with the Mad Men-fuelled growth of mass consumerism? Followed by Milton Friedman declaring that the SOLE responsibility of business is PROFIT, then Gordon Gekko’s ‘Greed is Good’. Particularly in the US and UK we drifted away from community towards individual desire and preservation.
As early as 1906 the Devil’s Dictionary definition of the corporation was ‘an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility’ and 2004 Joel Bakan likened the corporation to a psychopath due to its relentless ‘Pursuit of Profit and Power’ even when this inflicts harm on others and the planet.
But it wasn’t always so! Even the idea of public shareholding was created by Elizabeth I in 1555 as a way of democratising corporations - of making investment in them accessible to broader society.
If you look at the very first evidence of corporations (which I believe were the Shreni, thousands of years ago in ancient India) then through the Romans, Mediaeval guilds and charters, the first mass global commercial enterprises of the 17th century and Victorian railroad companies, they were all given a licence to operate and make a profit AS LONG AS THEY WERE ALSO BENEFITING SOCIETY. They had a defined public purpose agreed by the state which was revoked if not fulfilled.
Let’s celebrate B Corps for reminding us that business can be a force for good in society and for elevating companies who create benefit for ALL STAKEHOLDERS instead. As Martha Lane Fox said in The Times:
“To be a company on the B Corp list is an honour . . .
Most significantly, going through this process puts you on the right side of history for the planet and for people.”
