The Social Mission of Business
Businesses have the responsibility to aid in ending oppression.
Businesses have the responsibility to aid in ending oppression, inequality and exclusion. The ability of a business to decide and act quickly allows for agile responsiveness and impact. Money is a great leverage point and refusing service, turning off access, or redirecting PAC contributions are all things a business has at its disposal. Businesses employ thousands of people who are their own center of action and collectively can have impact. The business itself can take a stand for just and ethical things.
This requires its own mental model shift. It requires the business to orient towards something other than profit, or revenue, as its primary orientation point. A mission is a helpful tool, and yet a limiting one. All businesses play a part in advancing society, even if they don’t have a social mission, and they can still have a set of social principles or commitments that also guide them. As a business gets to a certain size, they bear the responsibility that a community or government does, as they bear a large impact on peoples lives. It is an easy parallel to see this as a sacred trust between the business and the people it serves, across all stakeholder groups.
This shift also requires a leader to adopt the mentality that consciousness isn’t enough. Agnostic development towards a goal is not enough. To be evolutionary, the leader must also have some form of a cause based purpose that includes ending suffering on the planet and sees a business in part as that vehicle. The principled and integrous stand allows for the business to follow this path and dedicate real time and resources towards this effort. What does this look like? Heavy investment into DEI training, choosing who to partner with and why, community involvement and action, making product decisions based on a real set of ethics that include DEI, and most importantly, being vocal and communicating the importance of creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive world.
Many businesses have begun this journey, and are actively taking a stand, sometimes painfully and less pretty than it can be but a stand nonetheless to create a more equitable and safe world for all. And so goes business, so goes the world. Spending money on training alone is a powerful intervention. For many, work is the only place they can go to receive education on cultural issues as well as explore their own biases and blindspots. It is a place of practice to learn how to create a more just world in the confines of a somewhat artificial environment. Most of the leaders we talk to today are actively engaged in their own inquiry at how to be at least more inclusive and for many far more than that to be champions for justice.
Over the past several years as the US administration has decidedly not chosen to engage in the topic, public perception has now swung to trusting business leaders more than the government, which is a first. We have seen business leaders take a stand after the murder of George Floyd, after the terrorist act of January 6th at the Capital, and for issues such as same sex marriage and climate change. As these companies make real change, the world changes as public perception is dominated by the marketplace. And it is only the beginning. As leadership, and business becomes a place that has social and cultural principles as a part of its essence, the world Evolves.
The front lines of the efforts that the civil rights leaders championed in the 60s are now diffuse, it is not just the governments and legal systems that can affect real change. Business now holds part of the role to create a more just equitable and diverse society through its actions. The shift towards business as a form of community, with underpinnings of shared responsibility and stewardship, is the first step. The next steps involve partnership with others in a common cause and walking the talk towards a more diverse, equitable and inclusive world.
