Seventh Generation Networking: Canada

Whilst away at a friend’s wedding, the world of social entrepreneurship and social responsibility continued to follow me around. Met an interesting guy who works in music TV in Canada, but who previously was involved with CSR with Seventh Generation, the US’ "leading brand of non-toxic household products" who, allegedly, are now Vermont’s coolest employer, ahead of the erstwhile Ben and Jerry. He was saying that Canada views the US and UK as a fair way ahead in terms of social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility, and that they have a distance to go.

I’m not sure this is totally the case, as there seems to be a fair bit of activity, particularly over in Vancouver. Check out these links:

– the Canadian Social Entrepreneurs Network
– the Vancouver Social Enterprise Forum
Canadian Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
– the Columbia Foundation
– the Peter Drucker (social) Innovation Award
Social Capital Partners
Tamarack

UPDATE:

In a bizarre coincidence, word reaches me of the 3rd Tremblant Forum on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, being held where I was at the Quebec wedding I mention above….the world moves in mysterious ways, indeed. See TremblantForum for more info…

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DUELISEF + CSR

There’s a couple of acronyms to get our teeth into on a Friday afternoon: ones for the acronym-buster in due course.

– DUELISEF stands for Duke University Enterprising Leadership Incubator Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship. Oh yes. Brought to my attention by fellow blogger Audeamus who covers similar ground, but with more of an international leaning. Anyway, there’s an article from one of the ELI (as they shorten it) Fellows called a Discourse on Social Entrepreneurship which makes decent reading.

– CSR is more widely-known, of course, as corporate social responsibility (sometimes shortened to CR or changed completely to Corporate Community Investment…CCI). Thinking about it today because Business in the Community have announced their 2006 Awards for Excellence (in a teacherly manner, the winning companies get a Big Tick).

Marks and Spencers were the overall winners with SSE friends Happy Computers winning Small Company of the year, which is well deserved. See the full list here, which is, encouragingly, extraordinarily long!

I’ll be helping to judge the ‘Innovation’ award of CAF’s CCI awards in the next few months, which should be equally encouraging and inspiring, and bring many more examples to our attention….

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Demos, Orange and Working Progress

DemosIt’s not often I find myself at the same event as Digby Jones, Director General of the CBI, but such was the case this morning at the launch of the Orange-sponsored Demos report, Working Progress, part of their Organisational Literacy programme. The research focuses on how young people and organisations (workplaces) can be reconnected, arguing that, currently, there is a significant and damaging disconnect between them.

While some of the findings might not seem revelatory to those working in learning and people development, there are some interesting findings and recommendations that are relevant to both the support and training for social entrepreneurs (who are often future employers and/or employees) and to the importance of values-led business in the 21st century.

– 88% of British employees think it is important that the organisation they work for is committed to living its values; only 45% believe that their employer does

– creativity and innovation are the skills that most business people think will be most important in 2010, followed by flexibility/multitasking, communication (of ideas), and problem-solving

– in 1983, 35% of people judged an organisation primarily by the quality of its products, while 15% judged it by its honesty and integrity; in 2006, the respective figures were 19% (quality product) and 21% (honesty/integrity) [NB – worth noting that profitability rose from 11% to 18% in the same period]

– organisations should recognise work-life balance as a skill (or set of skills) to be taught, and performance against that skill to be monitored as with other areas

– that peer-to-peer support and networks are increasingly important for current and future employees

– the Government should introduce a "skills portfolio" to help capture some of the learning, skills and aptitudes that are often not reflected in traditional qualifications

In social entrepreneurship terms, for example, we can point to our focus on making a practical project the focus/vehicle for learning (achieving those skills that employers want), on our emphasis on peer support and peer-learning networks, on our measurement of work-life balance as a skill that people need, and on the relevance and timeliness of values-led, more-than-profit organisations. The SSE, indeed, features as a case study in the research for its pioneering work with peer-led action learning and mentoring.

Demos/Orange were looking at this very much in terms of young people but, as was pointed out in the discussion, learning now takes place at all ages and in all areas, many of which are outside traditional educational institutions. So there are interesting lessons, perhaps, for learning providers considering how well we are supporting/training people not only to deliver on their own goals and establish their own initiatives, but also how well we are preparing them for the wider world at work.

Judging from this report, and our own experience, the answer would seem to be "pretty well". When one considers that employers will be seeking values-led, flexible, innovative, problem-solving, multitasking individuals, social entrepreneurs should have a rosy future, be they within or without larger organisations.

As for the event, Digby Jones inevitably caused a stir by banging on about numeracy and literacy, the need for efficiency in the public sector, and what the private sector can bring to the public and voluntary sector (without recognising the vice versa); his unanswered question was, with reference to work-life balance, "can we have it all?" The other speakers, including Kevin Steele, chief exec of Enterprise Insight [who had some big, hairy questions as well: What is education for? (discuss the elephant in the room!) and Does education take too long?] and Wes Streeting (VP of NUS), were inevitably somewhat overshadowed but the whole report made for valuable discussion and, at least on one table, pretty heated debate.

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Can big business still be ethical?

Interesting piece in the Guardian about whether ethical businesses can maintain their values and ethos when taken over by a large multinational (i.e. BodyShop and Loreal, Green & Blacks and Cadbury’s). The article, called When big business bites uses Ethical Consumer‘s ratings to argue that ethical credentials can be lost in a global behemoth that encompasses so many different strands, investments, stakeholders and so on. So Body Shop gets a low ‘ethiscore’ not only because it is part of a massive multinational and so forth, but also because Nestle own 26% of it (with all the baggage that brings).

The true test must be in the longer term: can these smaller businesses wield influence and clout from within that can change the culture of the organisations they find themselves in? Probably too early to say. And there should be questions that aren’t framed in simplistic ways: is it better for Green & Blacks to remain small (and beautiful?) or to expand to the point where new organic cocoa and fairtrade plantations are being demanded….already, their Maya Gold bar (the only one in their range that is fairtrade) is struggling to find enough organic/fairtrade beans, at least according to the Cadbury’s guy on Radio 5’s Business programme last weekend.

What is interesting is the convergence that the article ignores. It sees the world in terms of multinational corporates (big, bad and unethical) and small ethical businesses (small, lovely and social). But that is a world that is becoming increasingly blurred, as those more forward thinking organisations are not approaching CSR from a hand-outs/green-wash point of view, but from an "integral to our future" point of view. Unilever, for example, have done work with the Marine Stewardship Council, the recent You Buy U Give scheme for Sport Relief, and Ben & Jerry UK‘s impressive range of social/environmental activities. Not enough for them to be called a social enterprise, but more substantial than the ‘charity of the year’ stuff one sees elsewhere.

And can there ever be a multinational ethical business or social enterprise? Or will scale always end up compromising (or diluting) values, approach and ethical credentials? At least it seems that in the future we will get the chance to find out.

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