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School children are calling-out governments. Protesters are imploring us all to take action. If you’re asking ‘do they mean me, my business’? Yes, they do. And with good reason, according to Professor Steve Kempster.  

“Many businesses make really valuable contributions to their communities, pursuing activities that we commonly bracket as ‘corporate social responsibility’ or sustainability. But instead of separating business value from social impact, feeling that we ought to do a nice thing, let’s consider how it could become central to the business model. 

“There’s no need to separate business value and social impact. It’s time to re-frame the business model, re-frame what business value is. Good Dividends is a model that allows every organisation to explore that for themselves. 

“Rather than seeing activities that create social impact as a cost to the business, value is created when social purpose is inherent to the firm’s mission and actually drives innovation and profit.” 

Inspired by the research he undertook in his MBA Leading Business, Luke Freeman, Joint-Chief Executive of MF Freeman, has been taking steps towards Good Dividends, as Steve explains. 

“Luke has changed the way he thinks about Section 106, the clause within planning permission that requires developers to give so much towards community facilities or improvements. Before, this was seen as a cost, reducing profit. Luke’s chosen to re-frame that, embracing it as a positive message, turning it into reputational capital. It’s part of his investment in the ‘one planet community’ (the world that we are part of), with the business viewing it as something they want to do. It’s good from a customer’s point of view, and as employees come on side they’ll start sharing stories of the good things they do. He’s making them positive assets, rather than negative costs. 

“I give the example of a carpet tile manufacturer that had been looking at how to improve sustainability. Then they moved their purpose to be ‘more than zero’ emissions. Now, they are pursuing innovation that will extract carbon in the manufacturing process, so they will reduce the amount of carbon in the world by the way they manufacture their carpet tiles.  

“If many manufacturing businesses took this regenerative approach to their business model, in 40, 50, 60-years-time you’ll be seeing a completely different ecosystem in the world. By pursuing Good Dividends we start moving beyond where we’re at, we start moving beyond sustainability to a business model that connects business value and social impact together, in a purposeful way. We will move to a regenerative economy. 

“Extrapolate that. Think about entities, countries or corporations. Of the largest 200 entities in the world, 150 are corporations. Walmart is bigger than Portugal and Belgium. Amazon is bigger than New Zealand. The world’s challenges must be addressed by businesses. 

“When you think of ‘vision’, you might as well start thinking of a positive, regenerative society in which business has to be the main player, because it has the resource. 

“So, how do we take a utopian, big corporation opportunity, and make it happen as a small business? I’d like to offer the SDG Configurator as a tool to explore these ideas within the context of your own business: https://www.purpose.gooddividends.com/courses/t4-sdg-audit  

“We need to start thinking that social impact and business value are integral. Creating a vision that contributes to our one planet community is a way of increasing value for the business, while you are enhancing the world we all inhabit.”  

How can I learn more? 

You can read about Good Dividends and the UN’s Sustainable Development goals on https://www.purpose.gooddividends.com/pages/sustainable-development-goals .