Do we still need a “social” enterprise sector? Many businesses have “social impact” at least with their customers. And these customers around the world are demanding greater accountability and environmental sensitivity.
Here’s what a reader to this blog wrote last week. “The underlying distinction made between social and business enterprise is thin,” noted Ashim Kumar Chatterjee. “All businesses have to serve some social need to be able to last. I would be inclined to believe that there is a direct relationship between the business of a business enterprise and social needs. So long as the deliverables of the business remain socially relevant, the business will survive and sustain itself. The entire gamut of eco-friendly products and technologies are a case in point.”
Several people who work in the business sector made similar points to me last week at the SEA Summit + World Forum in San Francisco. These are folks who share the goals of the social enterprise movement but don’t use that term in their work. For at least some of their investors and customers, “social” comes across as uncompetitive, higher priced, inefficient.
So should we call the whole thing off?
I don’t think so. We have a long ways to go before all or even most businesses incorporate public impact into their business decisions. Think BP. And the nonprofit sector has just as long an entrepreneurial row to hoe to have social impact given the challenging philanthropic realities of the 21st Century. I think social enterprise is still a powerful term that helps organize our thinking (and ourselves) as we set out to “harness the power of the marketplace to solve critical social or environmental problems.”
What do you think?
Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing and implementation strategies.
From “Mission, Inc.” (by Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls, Jr:
“After all, a business cannot survive without meeting a social need, real or invented. One could craft an argument, no matter how hollow, that any enterprise is a social one: the NFL’s purpose is to provide an escape from everyday life; the fashion industry’s purpose is to create and celebrate beauty; the beer industry’s purpose is to help a guy take the edge off after a hard day. So, yes, if you really want to argue about it, every business has a social purpose. But we all know better than that. Some things really matter, and some things really don’t. Those things that matter are part of what we might call the common good, and everything else just isn’t. We would argue that the social purpose that is this target of any social enterprise must be squarely aligned with this concept of the common good.”