Last week I tweeted If corporations were socially responsible, we wouldn’t need a name for it. and was taken aback by how many retweets I got for it. It obviously struck a chord with a lot of folks. And, picking up on my previous post, it has everything to do with how vested interests respond to things that challenge their business model. Things like getting […]
social business
Conferentie: Van Vinken Naar Vonken – Ondernemen In De Nieuwe Wereld
Ondernemen op basis van zekerheden bestaat in veel gevallen uit het ‘afvinken’ van lijstjes. Ondernemen in een voortdurend veranderende omgeving vraagt om ‘vonken’, waarbij samenwerkende partijen op het juiste moment krachten weten te bundelen. Deze visie staat centraal tijdens ons seminar op woensdag 12 februari 2014. We geven die dag een podium aan mensen en organisaties die ondernemen opnieuw vorm hebben gegeven. Onze wereld lijkt […]
How The Light Gets In
The rate of change, the number of sources of change and the impact of change are at an unprecedented level in human history. Has it now reached such a pitch that change itself is a paradigm changing phenomenon, regardless of the content of the change?
Organizational Models for Social Business
Here we go with the third (and last) blog in this series which looks at some underlying theory about organization and management. In the social business context I consider the most significant approach to be Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM). The VSM has two central concepts. The first is feedback, which enables an organization to constantly learn and adjust to experience and to new variables in its […]
Why Becoming Social Isn’t Just For Woolly Headed Idealists
In my last article, ‘Love in the Time of Cholera: How to do Business in a Recession‘, I sketched out what being a social business is about and made the claim that making the change to such a model might be a reasonable response to the current state of the world. Social business can sound pretty idealistic and in a sense it is (there’s nothing wrong with having […]
Love in the Time of Cholera: How to do Business in a Recession
A consultant posted a plaintive cry on an online consultancy user forum recently asking for ideas on how you can motivate staff when you have nothing to offer in the way of cash, promotions or training and when they might even face redundancy. Tough indeed. But common enough in the current environment. We’re in the middle (yes, I think it’s still just the middle) of the deepest, most extensive economic depression I can […]