David Colander — Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up: For-Benefit Enterprises

Few people knew that when Milton Friedman claimed that a corporation's only responsibility is profits, it would become conventional wisdom. David Colander, the always original and often iconoclastic economist, makes the refreshing case in support of for-benefit enterprises.

Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up: For-Benefit Enterprises
David Colander | Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College
(h/t John Hobgood at FB)

Peter Bakker — Accountants Will Save the World

...we need to ensure that corporate reporting makes clear how a company is making its money, not just how much money it has made. For every robust, time-tested measure of return on financial capital, we need another for social capital — the economic benefits that derive from cooperation among groups, and yet another for natural capital — the supply of natural ecosystems (think forests, oceans, mineral deposits) that we turn into valuable goods or services future.

Make no mistake, I am a capitalist: Someone who puts capital to work, and wants something back. But where we've lost the plot is that we only demand — and manage — a return on financial capital. In order to address current economic crises in a systematic way, we must begin to demand a return on social and natural capital as well. That's where we need to change the rules of the game.

Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network
Accountants Will Save the World
Peter Bakker | formerly CEO of TNT N.V., now president, World Business Council for Sustainable Development