Given that Plan A has not served us, it is high time that we put our heads together to explore a better way towards a brighter future. As a nation of dogged optimists, the desire for unity and cohesion remains strong, but the economic framework to pave the path ahead is marred with potholes.
A revived Rainbow Nation must be grounded in an economic mentality that serves a broader purpose than enriching the few at the expense of the financially disconnected many. We need to imagine a benefit economy into being – a B Economy, if you will.
Seeking a better way
There is a growing movement of business leaders around the world that are turning their dissatisfaction with the status quo into a demonstrated provocation for change. They see the true nature of our system failures and seek ways to enhance the positive impact of their organisations, not only in how they serve their customers, but also their staff, suppliers, communities and the planet.
At the highest level, the World Economic Forum convened at Davos in January 2020 under the theme “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World”. Little did they know how telling this call to action would become, as rolling lockdowns ripped at the fabric of societies on every continent only weeks later.
Since then, open collaboration between 120 of the world’s largest companies led to the release in September of a common set of metrics for alignment of reporting on environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators and contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
During the same month, Imperative 21 launched a business-led network driving economic systems change, emblazoned on the impressive screen of the Nasdaq building in New York. This coalition of for-good organisations represents more than 70,000 businesses, 20 million employees, $6.6-trillion in revenue, and $15-trillion in assets under management. Yet it did not even make the news in South Africa.
A collective movement for change
While the UK, Europe and many South American countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru, along with the US, see the shared-value meta movement gaining mainstream traction, we still suffer relegation of the notion to NGOs, corporate social responsibility programmes and the public sector here on home soil.
The question I ask is, why?
Are we tripping blindly over immediate business continuity, political instability and the dire impact of Covid-19, at the expense of seeing the long-ranging picture of even greater strife? I would hypothesise that it is exactly the sum of these parts that in fact calls us to seek a regenerative route forward.
It could be argued that the size and systemic nature of the challenge are stumbling blocks for grounding this change into our industries and individual organisations; however, there is a stronger support structure in place to sustain this change than ever before – by way of collective will, available expertise, business initiatives and funding.
Culturally, the idea of stakeholder centricity is deeply embedded in the African notion of ubuntu. Now is the time to challenge apathetic leadership and bring it to life in the workplace, and not just at home in our communities.
The measure of doing good
One of the co-founders of Imperative 21 is B Lab, the 13-year-old non-profit behind B Corporation Certification – a community of leaders for a global movement of “business as a force for good”. Today there are over 3,500 businesses (among them, the likes of Patagonia) certified to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
With a fledgling but rapidly growing presence in Southern Africa, the B Corp framework offers a holistic and challenging standard for purpose-driven businesses to aspire to. The free B Impact Assessment tool offers impact measurement across five core dimensions, enabling any business owner to assess and improve in key areas of stakeholder accountability.
Recent data published by PwC in the UK points to strong resilience demonstrated by national B Corps, only 33% of whom had implemented the furlough scheme and just 20% of whom had abandoned planned social and environmental impact initiatives between March 2020 to July 2020.
The long game
We need an economic policy that encourages entrepreneurship and consolidates support for social entrepreneurs and our mid-tier independent businesses. We need to change the dialogue inside business from “quick wins” and dogmatic demands for “quarterly performance” toward a sustained commitment to growing deep-rooted organisations with a wider remit.
Our economic and social woes cannot be reversed by miraculous governmental alchemy, nor can they be solved by cash-strapped NGOs.
We need businesses big and small to embrace the idea of using the full leverage of their resources – not just their corporate social investment spend, but a broader vision of their ethos and focus – to create the groundswell for change that recognises and respects people, profit and the planet, thriving in unison. It is time to usher in the B Economy. DM/BM