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For the past three decades and more, a movement has been underway in the business community to include concerns for people and the planet into the policies and practices of Big Business. Variously called socially responsible business, corporate social responsibility (CSR), the triple bottom line, or by many other imprecise names, this movement for change in the way business is conducted has gained great momentum during the past fifteen years. It’s the rare business school nowadays that lacks courses in CSR or related topics, and most of the larger schools have institutes or centers devoted exclusively to this pursuit. Few major corporations fail to broadcast their adherence to CSR either in their communications to the public or with their own employees. CSR sells.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes


Everybody’s Business: The Unlikely Story of How Big Business Can Fix the World by Jon Miller and Lucy Parker ★★★★☆


Regrettably, in most companies, CSR is skin-deep. Such programs often include initiatives to lighten the company’s footprint on the environment, broaden employees’ engagement with the communities where they do business, or expand corporate philanthropy — programs that, in other words, are designed to make the company look good without changing anything meaningful. However, there is a small but growing number of major corporations (and many thousands of smaller businesses) in which the principle of the triple bottom line (“People, Planet, and Profit”) is now embedded in the decision-making process in every aspect of the company’s conduct. Those are the companies highlighted in Everybody’s Business.

In this fascinating, in-depth look at the mission-based operations of Nike, PepsiCo, IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, and other major companies, Jon Miller and Lucy Parker have brought to light the increasingly common concern among Big Business leaders about the inadequacy and counter-productiveness of the late conservative economist Milton Friedman’s views that “the business of business is business” and that the only legitimate function of any for-profit company is to enrich its stockholders.

A new generation of business leaders now coming to the fore is upending this conventional wisdom and reconceptualizing the reasons why their companies need to stay in business. In a number of the world’s biggest multinationals, that process of rethinking is leading them to the conclusion that their true purpose is to make the world a better place. The many brief case studies cited in this book are based largely on face-to-face interviews conducted all over the world, sometimes with a company’s CEO to highlight the firm’s new direction, sometimes with the hands-on manager of a beneficial initiative, sometimes with beneficiaries of the company’s commitment to share its resources (time, talent, and treasure).

“To save the world, harness the power of Big Business”

“Our proposition in this book,” the authors write, “is that if you want to fix the world, you’re better off harnessing the power of business than fighting it.”

As a survey of some of the most impressive Triple-Bottom-Line initiatives in today’s world, Everybody’s Business is superb. It’s obviously well researched, it’s well-written, and it’s structured in an engaging way. However, Miller and Parker stray far from their subject matter by appending a lengthy chapter about “the eleven conversations” that they assert dominate corporates’ concern for the future. The long, detailed typology of these eleven strategic topics — “enduring themes in the global debate, such as energy and climate change, education and skills, health and human rights” — is clearly an exercise in overreaching. This book would have been far stronger without it.

The authors are partners in a British corporate communications firm, the Brunswick Group. Lucy Parker’s previous experience was mostly as a documentary filmmaker for the BBC and an executive coach. Jon Miller comes from the advertising world, where he served as strategy director for leading agencies, working with such companies as Coca-Cola and American Express and NGOs including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and WWF. They spent two years together researching and writing Everybody’s Business.

This is one of the books I’ve included in my post, Gaining a global perspective on the world around us.

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