In the recent reading for class 15 on CSR and Sustainability , I red “Creating Shared Value” by Michael E Porter and Mark R Kramer published in Harvard Business Review and the contents sparked me to make a connection.
If you approach an ordinary student who is not in the faculty of business and ask them, “what do you think business is all about”, most students will reply with key words such as competition, money, or even corruption. In many cases, the negative images of business are somewhat true. Making profit and money are the classic orientations of businesses; on top of that, yes, corruption does happen in companies- perhaps more often than you may think in a variety of ways, but with the new movement towards creating a shared value, I see more to just reach a static goal like gaining market share.
Even after just reading the first two pages of the article, I can already envision the future
From taking note of recent company development and and successful company patterns, I can predict that future companies are going to shift their focus on creating and promoting shared value as compared to simple increasing profit through conventional ways. Popular examples of companies that have ventured towards the unpaved path towards promoting shared values are “GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Unilever and Walmart”. I am not saying that these companies have reached the stage of perfection, because no company ever will, but they are moving a step towards the right direction in terms of social responsibility. To shift a company’s focus from simple producing profitable numbers to creating values is a risk and I applaud successful companies. Now I am just excited to find out which is the next company to join this list!movements of companies. I remember a talk that I saw on the internet, it explained why people buy why a company does what it does and not what it sells. Take Apple for example, Apple sells its products as a sign of innovation, to display improvement of technology and for the convenience of the consumers. If Apple just decided to sell any brand-less MP3 player, computers or even cellular devices, then people would not line to for hours to buy their products. Their products aims to make life more convenient and enjoyable, that is also the exact reason why it is such a popular brand amongst consumers.
An example I found from my classmate’s blog on LUSH also explains the influence and growing attention on CSR in modern organizations.