If books were nails, Christine Arena‘s The High-Purpose Company would be one in the the coffin of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as commonly understood and debated. No company is perfect and no company will ever be - it’s companies that make their purpose invaluable to them and take responsibility for their actions that are truly responsible.
Arena dubs such companies “high-purpose companies”: they “exist to serve fundamental human needs” that are “deeply rooted throughout society” and they “are driven by purpose to the extent where purpose becomes a dominant force for corporate performance and development”. In other words, we had better evaluate a company’s corporate responsibility on its purpose and satisfaction of real needs, rather than any moral criteria.
After she retires the principal myths of CSR, chiefly that it’s about doing the right thing and about making the world a better place, Arena outlines a sequence for building high-purpose companies. This high-purpose progression begins with seeing the big picture and facing the truth about your company (realization stage); continues through setting intent and purpose (integration stage); and peaks with transcending, including, and anchoring the high purpose within your company (transformation stage). The book offers a number of detailed case studies of companies in each step of the progression.
It is the anchored high-purpose companies that are truly authentic and responsible: they “reflect their purpose inside and outside. They don’t have to fabricate elaborate means of conveying a responsible image for themselves because that image is intrinsic. It is who they are and what they are.” Corporate responsibility means authenticity. Corporate responsibility means your company’s higher purpose is “the sole source of identity, stability, and energy”. Corporate responsibility means being the change you, as a company, want to see in the world.
If I were to find a paragraph to summarize the book’s larger point, it would be this one (passage edited for length, emphasis mine):
“The corporate responsibility debate is passĂ©. [W]e as a society would do well to move past the “good company” versus “bad company” labels because those labels aren’t particularly useful or constructive. They don’t help us to learn anything new or achieve anything worthwhile. [C]orporate responsibility is not a narrow philanthropic area. Corporate responsibility means taking responsibility for a company’s past, present, and future behavior. It means being responsive to conditions that affect a business, rather than remaining impervious to them. [I]t is not about charity. It is about change. And coping with change, requires not just a conscience, but also a level of competence.”
Amen to that.
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Christine Arena, The High-Purpose Company: The Truly Responsible (and Highly Profitable) Firms That Are Changing Business Now, New York: Collins, 2007.
