As far as ideas go, social entrepreneurship and ethics are both as stimulating as they get, particularly for me. Given that my political background leans libertarian, the concept of businesses acting to create positive social change is right up my alley. As a result, Dr. Griffin’s presentation on social entrepreneurship was absolutely thrilling to me.
Dr. Eliada Griffin had a lot to say that was extremely insightful, and even more importantly, she spurred all of us to think more deeply about the social implications of business decisions. Many questions have been swirling around my mind since she spoke to us. If businesses are distrusted by the public to the extent that capitalism is seen as evil, then how can social entrepreneurship take root in a society? How can we, as entrepreneurs, help cure the ills of not only financial poverty, but also poverty of opportunity? What about poverty of freedom? What about poverty of choices? You get the idea, and as one might imagine, there is not a single simple answer to be had to any of these questions.
This is quite disheartening to some extent, though I admit that the challenge of bringing social change through the vehicle of capitalism is a topic I am extremely interested in. As such, corporate social responsibility was another topic related to social entrepreneurship that captivated me. I suppose that, in some ways, it was so captivating to me because it was something that seemed very intuitive to me; CSR was a new term, but the idea was something that had always existed in my mind. With all of that being said, I am by no means naive enough to believe that corporations always act ethically or with good intentions for society, nor am I naive enough to believe that corporations’ CSR goals always lead to positive outcomes; particularly in the case of large corporations, there are simply too many factors to guarantee positive social change, regardless of intent. However, it does make me happy that this concept of corporations advocating social change has a name, has a general set of guidelines, and is being advanced constantly by firms and researchers alike. To me, the most powerful agent for change in the world is capitalism; therefore, if the market at large acts ethically, thinks about its impact on society, and strives to create societal change, the world will change for the better, or at least, for what the market believes is better.