I have participated in a number of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) activities during my working time, and seen reports of numerous others: tree planting, zebra crossing painting, social assistance to orphanages, homes for the disabled/ disadvantaged; I have been involved with visits to babies’ homes, hospitals, prisons; school building paintings. All the while this was ongoing, the ‘core’ business of the enterprises with whom I did this kept going – the relentless pursuit of targets so we could make profits to report at year end as the primary shareholder value we were expected to deliver. These other initiatives were auxiliary to the ‘profit’ value – you could miss out on a year-end bonus share if you did not score the right target on this objective.

Now I did not mind the CSR activities in and of themselves. In fact I generally wished we could do more. What continually vexed me was the message the way they were run sent: “what you do daily from 8am – 5pm   (contract hours; we usually started earlier and many often ended much later) does not contribute to the community, it’s not a social responsibility”. In a sense, I felt like the CSRs we did were ‘hush payments’ to soothe a guilty conscience both on ours, our customers and our shareholders account; so we could feel better about making profit while there still remained problems unsolved around us.  I also hated that it cast the issues on which CSR focused in a light that they could not be solved sustainably (using self generated funding) – most interests supporting causes in this area tended to be of a non-profit nature, dependent on good will donations and grants, usually provided by non-resident individuals and/or organizations.

Here’s the thing though; what we spent our time doing for those 40 hour work weeks WAS a social responsibility (disclosure: I worked, and still work in banking and finance). We did a lot to make the lives of so many people possible – we provided safe storage for the fruits of their work, we extended them credit to seize opportunities they would otherwise not be able to sorely on their own resources, we made it possible for them to transact with partners in different geographical locations through various trade finance services, we provided them secure, transparent, non-repudiate means to pay their suppliers and/or receive payments from their clients – and in this context we supported them to employ staff and make payroll payments, settle their obligations to their suppliers and be the value to their customers they had promised they would be. They were able to trade successfully enough to make tax payments to government as they fell due, which in its way contributed to the ability of the state to fund the social programs falling within its care. The story of what we did though was not usually told this way – and even today it isn’t. Nor is this fact exclusive to where I work now. Most any commercial enterprise that has succeeded the survival stage and is now in a growth phase is grappling with this, or they shall if not yet. I find the biggest reason for this to be that we have generally accepted that a business exists for the primary purpose of meeting shareholder value – usually expressed in profits earned, from which dividends are then paid. More disciplined minds than my own have researched and presented their work studying this, and I have done quite a bit of reading around it myself. In my study I have observed that the profit motive as a drive for business and primary shareholder value – the way we generally understand it in my country – is mostly a western philosophy/ ideology. I find a more holistically balanced understanding of shareholder value when I read accounts of Eastern (Asian) economies and/or businesses, and when I read the articles and commentaries of their leading business leaders today. The one that has recently impressed me is “The Toyota Way”, a study on the Toyota manufacturing philosophy done by Jeffery J Liker. It was very striking to me just how much this company’s philosophy focused on the welfare development of the individual, how this care spread to the company’s partners – suppliers and distributors; and how their operation was built with their customers at its center – the customers literally decided the pace and organization of the operating model. It’s one of the best reads I have had, and am still reading it! I recall thinking to myself after reading it that nothing this company was doing would fail to qualify as a social good/responsibility – and their discipline in doing this did not conflict with their making profit either – lots of it in fact.

You need to recognize that your enterprise IS a social responsibility. It may not immediately appear so, it may present as your basic trade enterprise, but this is where writing your story, and the work on defining your mission come to great value. If say, you find yourself bothered about the standard of education in the country and are interested to do something about it, then that basic trade enterprise could be the means to raise the funding for your ultimate project, it could be the testing ground for the models you want to implement to improve the things that bug you, it could be the means of access to the network of collaborators with whom you intend to work on your dream initiative, it could be the training ground you use to prepare those that shall be running with you in the project; it could itself be the example in terms of organization, discipline or function that you intend to replicate to scale to solve the problem that bothers you. It is this narrative that will explain why that basic trade enterprise should be a going concern, and why you should work to ensure it is so. This narrative will also attract to you the right partners (shareholders) that identify what you are trying to achieve as value to themselves. This will not be inconsistent with you being profitable – as a matter of fact, it will form the understanding as to why you MUST be profitable (or more accurately, a going concern).

A literal example of this is Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma. He stated that his company exists to make it easy to do business anywhere. The group’s aspiration for the future is, “… to build the future infrastructure of commerce. We envision that our customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that we will be a company that lasts at least 102 years”. In a 2017 letter to shareholders, Ma said, “While public shareholders expect us to be profitable, our raison d’etre cannot be merely to make money”. He explained further, “I believe there is a massive opportunity to help alleviate poverty and catalyze economic development in china’s rural countryside through technology and innovation. This is our opportunity to showcase what we are really capable of”.   Now how is this inconsistent with social responsibility?

Every business is, by its nature, a catalyst for change. No business can exist without creating a ripple effect by affecting its employees, the place it calls home, the environment around it or the people it serves ( quoted from “Story Driven: You don’t need to compete when you know who you are” by Bernadette Jiwa). For this reason, the careful delivery of your enterprise should not be something you take for granted – you never really know how many people shall literally live or die on account of the mission you have set forth to achieve.