More Corporate Companies Should Adopt Social Enterprise Ethos
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Recent political and financial events have seen businesses retrench, dig in and attempt to ride out the storm. To many, this suggests that the corporate world is being indifferent to its social responsibility. Community projects are being curtailed and cash donations to charities drying up. The impact can only be detrimental.
As austerity measures deepen, are big businesses unwittingly contributing to social injustice? If so, who will fill the gap they are leaving?
In the UK, social entrepreneurs are often seen as the antithesis of corporate enterprise and tend to stand shoulder to shoulder with social justice issues. They strive to create new models that aim not only to deliver shareholder value (for social entrepreneurs are still business people after all), but also seek to share some of that value elsewhere. Today’s social entrepreneurs look for alternative ways to run successful businesses that are not dependant on traditional power models. Wealth is considered as more than a healthy bank balance and value becomes more than just cash. The social entrepreneur ensures that some of the wealth their activity generates benefits the wider society.
