I’m not a utopian and I’m not really even a radical. I’m not saying we have to overthrow corporate capitalism and create a completely new system. That’s just not realistic, even if it were desirable. I am interested in talking about what people can do tomorrow, or next week, not in the possibility of some utopian future. And what I think people can get activated about as citizens, today and tomorrow, is trying to regain our sense of responsibility and power to actually create a reasonable balance between the creation of financial wealth in society, through corporations and their activities, and broader public interests.”
This sensible, yet deceivingly profound statement was uttered in an interview a few years ago by a guy named Joel Bakan, author of one of the most shocking and insigtful books I had ever read. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power chronicles the litany of evils Big Business had done to the environment, to communities and to each other over centuries – largely with impunity. And their excuse? Well, they are legally bound by their shareholders to pursue profit at all costs, aren’t they?
Yes and no. Thankfully, many companies are now genuinely waking up to the fact that the so-called triple bottom line (profit, people, planet) doesn’t just have to be a disingenuous, insincere public relations corporate mantra, as Bakan so eloquently expounds on above. In fact, the concepts of profit and doing good are actually inextricably linked, according to Richard Kyle, Executive Director at Regency Foundation Networx. “You CAN make social and environmental profit without diminishing financial profit,” he tells me one sunny morning in Pretoria. And he is illustrating this through a documentary series called "IT'S AFRICA'S TIME", a new intervention showing how companies across Africa are focusing on creating 'shared value' and how this business model can make a contribution towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“Through this series we want to illustrate how making an investment in the communities and environment in which you do business will pay off in every way, including financial.
We want to showcase companies in this documentary who understand that looking at their business context holistically is beneficial to everyone, including their shareholders. Nike, for instance began to work with Mohammed Yunis in India, developing a low-cost shoe for the poor in Bangladesh and ntary is not primarily about the companies; it’s about the people of Africa. In Zambia for example, we looked at how Standard Chartered worked with the Ministry of Agriculture to create a unique funding model for farmers. Instead of the banks taking out security against their land, they now take security out on their crops instead. This allows a farmer to send his kids to school and plan long-term without the constant fear of a bad weather season robbing him of his future.”
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blended value in new markets