HUFFINGTON
08.04.13
COURTESY OF PROMEGA CORP.
CORPORATE ZEN
ciety. Whole Foods Market’s John
Mackey has emerged as a proponent of what theorists have called
“conscious capitalism,” an entrepreneurial mode that puts social and environmental concerns
alongside the usual aspirations
of profit-making commerce. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is in
this camp, too, publicly urging
business leaders to push for more
than profit while working for improvements in education and expanded access to health care.
Far from revolutionaries intent
on waging Marxist struggle, such
executives are card-carrying capitalists who see free enterprise as
a crucial artery of innovation and
fortune. But they critique the role
that capitalism has come to play
in determining how we live. They
assail the short-term thinking
that has too often driven corporate strategies, sometimes sticking
the public with unaccounted for
costs in the form of pollution, joblessness and economic anxiety —
often to the long-term detriment
of the businesses themselves.
In short, they want a new kind
of capitalism, one that places
well-being alongside revenues
and market share as objects of
prime consideration.
In Linton’s reckoning, the basic
organizing principles that govern
many businesses have become
disconnected from the needs of
Third spaces
located
around the
Promega
campus invite
employees
to work in
a different
environment
to gain new
perspective,
fresh thinking
and a break
from their
primary work
space.