Long Term #Capitalism: Two kinds of For-Benefit organisation

It was perhaps the Mckinsey challenge, above all, which highlighted business which takes the bottom line beyond maximising shareholder returns.

The challenge was prompted by an article by Dominic Barton on Capitalism for the long term:

“We can reform capitalism, or we can let capitalism be reformed for us, through political measures and the pressures of an angry public. The good news is that the reforms will not only increase trust in the system; they will also strengthen the system itself. They will unleash the innovation needed to tackle the world’s grand challenges, pave the way for a new era of shared prosperity, and restore public faith in business.”

21 years ago, US President Bill Clinton was warned:

We can choose to not reform capitalism, leave human beings to die from deprivation — where we are now — and understand that that puts people in mode.

When in mode, kill or be killed, there is no civilization at all. It is the law of the jungle, where we started ago. In that context, ‘terrorism’ will likely flourish because it is ‘terrorism’ only for the haves, not for the have-nots. The have-nots already live in terror, as their existence is threatened by deprivation, and they have the right to fight back any way they can.

‘They’ will fight back, and do.

A prizewinning article described the DNA of a new capitalism in the For-Benefit enterprise and how it was going to structure a new economy.

Mine described how the for-benefit business model began 21 years ago with a paper which was delivered to the White House and shared around the UNC campus in North Carolina. The article goes on to describe how it was applied in Russia, Ukraine and the UK.

In a follow-up article, I shared arguments from our strategy plans, the ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine in particular. The was the New Bottom Line.

If there’s a likeness between the two, it’s easy to explain. In 2009, I approached B Labs seeking collaboration with the ‘Marshall Plan’, sharing the synopsis of the 1996 paper.

The prizewinning article refers to a number of other organisations I have tried to engage with about this subject over the years, with varying degrees of success.

Here on Linkedin as we began our work in North Carolina, I tried to become a member of the NC fourth sector cluster, to describe the relationship with former senator John Edwards. A club that wouldn’t have someone like me as a member, as it turned out.

It’s been more than a decade since I approached Social Enterprise UK, then known as the Social Enterprise Coalition. For them, this work was beyond their focus.

I’ve been a contributor to discussions on the Socap Network and Skoll World Forums. In this 2006 discussion on Profit for A Purpose, for example.

That doesn’t mean any of these will be joining us in the trenches soon.

What’s the point of trying to airbrush the pioneers out of the picture — does it make for a better world?

Thanks to an article from Bloomberg on the eve of Ukraine’s uprising, I discovered that McKinsey had a role in this too.

“Election spending in Ukraine is opaque, but both Akhmetov and Firtash are widely thought to have sponsored Yanukovych’s campaigns. Even as they have supported an increasingly authoritarian Yanukovych at home, however, Akhmetov and Firtash have invested heavily in building their reputations in the West.

Akhmetov’s System Capital Management JSC is a partner of the Swiss-based World Economic Forum. It has used the services or attracted financing from, Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, the U.K.’s Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International AG. Firtash has made generous donations to the University of Cambridge. This year he started financing the Days of Ukraine festival in the U.K., held at prestigious sites in London, such as the Saatchi Gallery.

The two men have also hired prominent Western consulting companies, including McKinsey & Co. Inc., to develop an economic plan for Ukraine, while bolstering Yanukovych, who is the biggest obstacle to any reasonable economic policy.”

In his notes from 2007, Terry Hallman wrote:

‘As the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan came around in June 2007, was emerging within Ukraine of a certain political boss preparing a Marshall Plan for Ukraine. This person was a reputed mob boss — exactly the sort of entity that the original Marshall Plan meant to oppose. It seemed most likely that whatever he came up with would be self-serving, hijacking the label ‘Marshall Plan’ and turning the whole notion on its head. I reviewed the original Marshall Plan and realized that what I had written was, in fact, the definition and spirit of the original Marshall Plan. Thus, in June 2007, I appended the original title with “A Marshall Plan for Ukraine.” After some discussion among trusted colleagues over timing, I published an abbreviated version of the paper in two parts in August 2007 in the ‘analytics’ section of the Ukrainian news journal for-ua.com.’

An Ukrainian anti-corruption parliamentarian describes how Western politicians are flocking toward another plan to whitewash an oligarch’s reputation. He describes The Firtash Octopus.

Among these is former UK business secretary Lord Mandelson who told a social enterprise summit that his department was helping firms to help others.

On The Purpose of Business group you may learn how it began with a free-to-use paper from the steering group of the Committee to Re-Elect the President