Paul Polman - a new form of #capitalism called #socent

Writing for Huffington Post on Where Our Moral Compass Meets the Bottom Line, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said this about the need for business to be contributing to society:

"When people talk about new forms of capitalism, this is what I have in mind: companies that show, in all transparency, that they are contributing to society, now and for many generations to come. Not taking from it.

It is nothing less than a new business model. One that focuses on the long term. One that sees business as part of society, not separate from it. One where companies seek to address the big social and environmental issues that threaten social stability. One where the needs of citizens and communities carry the same weight as the demands of shareholders."

I'd described how this business model was deployed when I wrote last year for Mixmarket about The New Bottom Line 

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”

In 1996 the threat of global uprisings due to inequality was drawn to the attention of US President Bill Clinton in a seminal paper proposing an alternative to tradtional capitalism. It described a business model which put the needs of the community ahead of shareholder returns.

In 1999, founder Terry Hallman travelled to Russia at the time of an economic crisis in which business as usual had a leading role. In How Harvard Lost Russia, David Mclintick describes the Russia project which left Harvard in disgrace.

Wrting up his recommendations for an alternate bottom up strategy, he submitted his proposals for a microenterprise development initiative to Clinton's office. with a warning - We have no manual to deal with the collapse of Russia. The result was the Tomsk Regional Initiative.

Paul Polman's new business model is today 15 years old and it is more generally known as social business - a self sustaining non dividend distrbuting form of social enterprise.

We soon learned that Polman had joined Arianna Huffington and Sir Richard Branson in the B Team.

Branson had been approached for support with our work in 2009 via his Virgin Unite foundation. I wrote to them offering to lead the way in Ukraine where our primary focus was removing children from residential "care" facilities described as 'Death Camps for Children'

In 2012 I had the opportunity to describe these efforts to Arianna Huffington, when Skoll Social Edge hosted a discussion on Cultivating Empathy, I described how we'd reasoned for economics to be measured in human terms  It was anothe conversation cut short.

They were both publishing books when I attempted to engage.     

'Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.

Each of us who have a choice can choose what we want to do to help or not. It is free-will, our choice, as human beings.'

It was the cause of children in Eastern European institutions for the imperfect that was to dominate his remaining years following his article 'Death Camps for Children', describing a place called Torez. It would feature 5 years later in a Sunday Times article.

Friends on the ground recalled his determination, publishing an extract of his fax to USAID and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, from Feb. 2008, calling for their support.

'On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission – rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished.'"

it was in the 'Death Camps ' articles that my late colleague focussed on the root cause of social problems in Ukraine that would lead to an uprising which now runs the risk of developing into a new Cold War:

"Excuses won’t work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine’s economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine’s orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine’s death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them.."

We begin to see through a glass darkly. Pinchuk has connections in the UK with Branson and Tony Blair, who benefits from large donations to his Faith Foundation. Akhmetov is close to Lord Mandelson who as EU trade minister had taken a lead in advocating Ukraine as an Eastern partner. Poroshenko is now Ukraine's President with US approval. They are indeed "all in this together"       

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corithians 13:12

 

 

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