By Scott Bellows
In Summary
- Businesses with focus on environment, society and employees reap benefits beyond profits.
Naisola languished in her job as a marketing
executive in one of Kenya’s leading deposit taking microfinance (DTM)
institutions. She completed her MBA in 2010 and expected that the degree
would launch her into a more meaningful career.
Naisola desired to change the world and impact
society. She felt that microfinance might help boost the working poor
into the middle class.
However, following four years in microfinance,
Naisola saw the DTM upscaling away from serving its original mission.
The DTM found it cheaper and more profitable to provide salary loans
instead of financing mama mbogas to emerge out of poverty.
Salary loans did not appeal to Naisola. She did
not feel the passion behind helping those who already attained a salary.
What Naisola desired was a more purely social business with deeper
impact.
Now, many readers might advise Naisola to go work
for an NGO. A civil society group, in theory, should focus exclusively
on its social mission and helping society. However, she felt that NGOs
did not posses sustainability.
Naisola’s dilemma revolves around the debate about the extent of social mission should exist in companies.
A “social” corporation focuses on three factors of
success: people, planet, and profits. Many firms just utilise some
corporate social responsibility (CSR) through funding a few initiatives
and gaining public relations mileage, but not focusing their core
products on items that change the world. Also, many companies obsess
over CSR for public relations, but treat their own employees poorly.
An extreme opposite of NGOs, we think of a tobacco
firm making cigarettes. The cigarettes kill their clients, so people
are not a focus of such a firm.
The cigarettes pollute the environment, so the
planet does not concern a tobacco company. But, instead, the tobacco
firm cares exclusively about profits.
In the middle of the spectrum, Safaricom’s
development of mobile money helped positively change how every person
in Kenya may pay for products and services, save money, and send money
in safer easier ways.
However, Safaricom famously does not only focus on
the people outside its firm, but also on recruiting and rewarding its
own employees.
Safaricom exists as one of the few firms in Kenya
that actively recruit people with physical disabilities to work in the
company. Many blind employees work at the Safaricom call centre who
might find it difficult to find work unless another open-minded employer
recruits.
On the complete other side of the spectrum from
tobacco firms, Namaste Solar in Colorado might arguably exist as the
most socially conscious business in the world.
The company saves the planet by reducing reliance
on fossil fuels and pollution through the proliferation of solar energy.
So, Namaste Solar’s whole product line helps the world.
Further, Namaste Solar makes significant profits
and experiences solid growth. The firm covers a planet and a profits
focus. However, what makes Namaste Solar stand out revolves around how
it treats its people.
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