The case for making a difference in business
It’s the latest buzzword you’ll hear at a thousand conferences: shared value. But what does it really mean and how can the concept be implemented practically in companies?
You’d be forgiven for thinking that "shared value" is just a buzzword to obscure the real reasons businesses exist: to make profit and deliver returns to shareholders. The concept made its debut in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article by a Harvard Business School professor, Michael Porter. "Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy or sustainability, but a new way for companies to achieve economic success," he wrote at the time. Later, in 2012, Porter and consulting firm FSG launched the Shared Value Initiative, which advocates a business strategy that "reconnects company success with social progress". Only, that still sounds a little too much like jargon that only MBA graduates would understand. Shift Social Development CEO Tiekie Barnard admits that, even in countries that have been grappling with the concept for a lot longer than SA, there is still confusion. "People still confuse [shared value] with corporate social investment," she says. "Some companies have tak...
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