Conflict? Naaah....

Conflict? Naaah... 

People tend to say that there is an explicit conflict between returns and social commitment of enterprises nowadays. We live in a world so competitive that all has become about the money. Success comes with the work “have”… if you have enough means you have succeeded. But what happens with the social responsibility that enterprises have with their workers, environment and society in general?

Capitalism has guided our corporate system for the last century and the natural returns that businesses create have kept the wheel of economics turning. Many downturns have occurred since then. On times, economy boomed into two-digit growth on industrialized countries; on the other hand, the crash in 2008 showed us the other side of the coin where thousands of companies shut their activities in a harsh recession.

All these matters keep on filling our newspapers everyday. People today are constantly questioning weather the “system” is correct or not. All those arguments against pure capitalism have derived in a lot of social initiatives in favor of the disfavored population, the planet, etc. Now we find social entrepreneurs trying to work on highly sophisticated business models targeting a specific need of a community. All great efforts… but still minor. What happens with the rest of the traditional entrepreneurs whose main focus is value creation through returns on their companies? Are they to be blamed for the economic catastrophe derived from capitalism?

The social component that enterprises give to their communities is sometimes unrecognized. Returns versus the duty to serve society seem to be faced against each other, when the truth is that they are both a consequence of the other when there is responsibility in between.

Let’s talk about high returns: as a company receives enough money for the value it is creating, it has the opportunity to pay better to his workers. This means that regular people will have more money on their pockets for consumption. Inevitably will buy more, creating a wealth cycle throughout the whole economic system. As these workers are allowed to have a better quality of life, means that they will have the opportunity to send their kids to better schools. The much more prepared society is, means that on the future more value added jobs will be filled with these talents. That is later traduced into even better paid jobs. The cycle re-starts.

On summary, as a good friend of mine said to me a couple of weeks ago: there is no better social entrepreneurship than job creation.

The key to making this a reality is the word responsibility. Not everyone is destined to being an entrepreneur and to have his or her own company. If you do, be aware that you are already contributing enormously to your society by giving employment. Be responsible enough to pay enough. This gesture makes you, just by that little detail… a world changer. Congratulations!