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Jeff Mowatt
Gloucester
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Jeff commented on the article |Kerri,
In financial and numerical terms yes, though we'd be unlikely to be able to persuade 49 other businesses to invest 1% of their profit into a social objective. What we choose to do ourselves is a different matter and that choice is for a business whose very pupose is social
Consider "Secretary Hillary Clinton's endorsement of social entrepreneurship and social capital markets, a decision that could be foundational to the development of a systematized large-scale funding system for social businesses that integrate cause into the very fiber of their business model. I hope to publish many more articles about the development of social capital markets and the integration of social entrepreneurship into the American capitalist and business mainstream."
http://www.causeintegration.com/tag/global-partnership-initiative/
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Jeff commented on the article |
An interesting point about corporations as people which is made in our own work for the Economics for Ecology conferences in Eastern Europe.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/projects/ukraine/sumy/
Overall the point being made is that sustainability cannot be built on an unsustainable economic model, which capitalism has proven to be.
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Jeff commented on the article |
Hi Kerri,
In the paper that conceived a profit-for-purpose model for social innovation, the ethical case, that we should act to reform an economic paradigm where people were disposable, was argued.
The paper for People-Centered Economic Development proposed a non-dividend distributing business model where at least 50% was re-invested in the community.
4 years later, the "at least 50%" constraint becomes the criteria that the UK Department of Trade and Industry use to qualify a social enterprise. We have argued since what social enterprise is.
More recently another organisation offers the opportunity to be evaluated for one's social, environmental and ethical standards. It is aimed at moving beyond rhetoric and greenwash to feature business which conforms to standards suggested by leading civic groups. Those featured may or may not be social enterprises.
http://www.seewhatyouarebuyinginto.com/
Jeff
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Jeff commented on the article |We're one of those 1500 Rod refers to and by coincidence I was blogging on approxinately the same subject this morning before I saw the "Tweet"
http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=154586
It was September 5 years before 9/11 when the suggestion of creating a form of 'people-centered' economic development by investing in communities as a new strategy was mooted and the first opportunity to deliver proof came in Russia where the economy had recently collapsed.
The subsequent interview with a Tatar diaspora leader describes the success of microfinance assisted business creation and the potential for deploying it to a community still at risk.
http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/economicdev.html
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Jeff commented on the article |Ryan there's little doubt in my mind that demonstrating social respponsibility can result in increased profitability for shareholders. We, that it P-CED, come at thsi from another direction, that of maximsing social impact. It began in 1996 with a challenge to the Chicago doctrine, suggesting that by shareholder consent a new type of business might be feasible.
"The P-CED concept is to create new businesses that do things differently from their inception, and perhaps modify existing businesses that want to do it. This business model entails doing exactly the same things by which any business is set up and conducted in the free-market system of economics. The only difference is this: that at least fifty percent of profits go to stimulate a given local economy, instead of going to private hands. In effect, the business would operate in much the same manner as a non-profit organization. The only restrictions are the normal terms and conditions of free-enterprise. If a corporation wants to donate a portion of profits to its local community, it can do so, be it one percent, five percent, or even fifty percent. There is no one to protest or dictate otherwise, except a board of directors and stockholders. This is not a small consideration, since most boards and stockholders would object. But, if an arrangement has been made with said stockholders and directors such that this direction of profits is entirely the point, then no one will object. The corporate charter can require that these monies be directed into community development funds, such as a permanent, irrevocable trust fund. The trust fund, in turn, would be under the oversight of a board of directors made up of employees and community leaders."
http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/history/
What follows is a research trip to Russia where the Chicago School approach has been deployed top down to introduce capitalism in the Harvard Prroject, as a Defense Enterprise Fund initiative.
Arriving in the wake of their 1998 economic collapse P-CED suggested an alternate bottom up approach which was to source the Tomsk regional initiative and a community microfinance bank which returned all investment.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/projects/russia/
A few days ago in describing what he calls social business Muhammad Yunus said that "the social businessman gathers capital through the profit-driven model and then uses it to fund the social enterprise, which then sustains itself through a bare minimum economic profit. This approach combines competition and altruism into one package."
That's the way we approach it, too in using all surplus revenue to leverage social enterprise in other countries.
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Jeff commented on the article |Welcone to the debaclle that's been an endless source of disagreement in the UK
The problem is, we can't agree on the definition of what has become a form of loose branding. Then in walks goverment to declare that it's just not vague enough.
Of course there's a social component to all business which abides by law and a modicum of ethical principles which results in developing local economies and advancing technology for human benefit. A bona-fine anti-social enterprise would have to be engaged in something like human trafficking or protection racketeering.
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Jeff commented on the article |
Well yes, and we've had lots of arguments about what is and isn't social enterprise.
Our approach is based on the model described in a 1996 white paper as people-centered economic development. We've been doing software business for social purpose where all surplus revenue goes to social investment initiatives. As you can see this has made some impact.
http://people-centered.net/Services.aspx
The verification of our social purpose comes from being members of this network who evaluate our social environmental and ethical practices across all activities.
http://www.seewhatyouarebuyinginto.com/
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Jeff commented on the article |There was one that made the point against poverty very well in 2007 when Doonesbury published a strip of a soldier reading about Yunus, he remarks that for the amount being spent in Iraq millions could be lifted out of poverty.
That cartoonists probably didn't know that precisely the same comparison was being made in a strategy paper which called on support fron US government for a 'soft power' initiative.
"That same amount of money, spread over five years instead of one week, would more than cover the investment cost of the initial components of this project, and allow a reserve fund for creating new projects as Ukraine's intelligentsia invents them in the Center for Social Enterprise. It is proposed that Ukraine and the US provide equal portions of this amount. Ukraine is certainly able to provide that level of funding, given that projects are designed with the same fiscal discipline employed in the traditional business sector. That means they pay for themselves, one way or another.
"Project funding should be placed as a social-benefit fund under oversight of an independent board of directors, particularly including representatives from grassroots level Ukraine citizens action groups, networks, and human rights leaders."
http://en.for-ua.com/analytics/2007/08/09/110003.html
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Jeff commented on the article |Now there may be those who'd prefer to have this and us painted out of the picture, and they may have the influence to achieve it, but this is about far more than us now and doing so would be to deprive some of the most vulnerable of their smallest hope.
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/the_abandoned_children_of_ukraine
If by now I've got your attention, the international charity Everychild in their recent campaign 'Every child deserves a family" point out that the right to a family life is a missing element of development aid. We couldn't agree more because we have direct experience of NGOs and development agencies wanting to duck the issue.
http://www.everychild.org.uk/get_involved/take_action/deserves_a_family
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Jeff commented on the article |
"Since the crisis hit, an incredible array of commentators have taken the chance to proclaim either the peril, the end, or the rebirth of capitalism."
Indeed they have and I've been keeping a record of who's saying what:
http://people-centered.net/Capitalism.aspx
I suspect this Tim Leberecht article which appears to have gone may not have included the earlier pontifications it's worth offering this enlightenment from 1996, 12 years before the crisis and a critique delivered to President Clinton. It offered a "what if" for a theoretical paradigm.
The core argument - that wealth based on imagined numbers trumped people who were real and the new paradigm was called people-centered economic development.
"Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion."
It was published separately as a manifesto in July 2008
http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/background/
Proof of concept came in 1999 - 2004 in the shape of the Tomsk Regional Initiative where it wss deployed to source a development initative and community bank. This was a time of economic boom in the US where there was little appetite for changing anything but Russia's economy had collapsed and top down Disaster Capitalism stewarded by Harvard had failed, as David Mclintick later describes in 'How Harvard Lost Russia' concluding that they failed to introduce democratic governance alongside Western capitalism.
The business model was established formally in the UK in 2004 and has since been deployed toward humanitarian efforts in Eastern Europe.
By this time the concept of a cause driven business, with a financial and social return had begun to gain popularity. It was deployed from the UK to research and publish the microeconomic 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine in 2006, aiming to deploy social enterprise along with other complementary components on a national scale.
Part of that paper described a social investment fund mechanism which would propel social innovation. At that time, the US still had little interest in social investent.
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