 I'm
in Boston at a conference called Future of the Corporation. The issue
of corporate social and environmental responsibility and sustainability
is part of my mandate in my new job, so this trip was both personal and
business for me.
One of the speakers was David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World.
Like me, Korten seems to vacillate between optimism and pessimism of
the issue of corporate reform. He lamented that overconsumption and
overpopulation were essential to unsustainable corporate success, and
were fueling their power, and said corporate charters needed to change
from a focus on private advantage to public responsibility. I spoke to
him briefly at the cocktail reception, and he seems to have been
co-opted into the prevailing worldview of US progressives that
corporatism and its abuses can be reined in with sufficient collective
citizen will. Though perhaps as a professor he has no choice -- it may
be just a brave public face.
The dinner speaker was Robert
Kuttner, founder of American Prospect and a Boston Globe columnist. He
confirmed my thinking about the vulnerability of the US dollar and the
excesses of the deregulated financial markets. His position is well
articulated in this article. Other interesting speakers included:
- Craig Cohon of Globalegacy,
which uses funds from big corporations to launch startups in struggling
nations, and who tried to convince us that Generation Millennium has
what it takes to fix what we've screwed up, and that business leaders
had power to make change but were fearful to use it;
- Henry Mintzberg, the Canadian management science
guru, who called (in Boston) for "a new Tea Party", saying that
corporations are incapable of solving our major social problems and
that they should be reined in, deprived of 'personhood' rights and
refocused on the one thing they do well (efficient resource allocation);
- Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO
urged re-regulation of corporations to force them to disclose and
accept costs that are currently externalized (pushed off to the
taxpayer, the environment, other countries and future generations), and
relearning to practice the vocation of management as a
priority-balancing art (he's one of many, many Americans who think
'leadership' is the problem and solution behind many of these
challenges, which regular readers know I disagree with);
- One of
the attendees made an impassioned plea to recognize that government is
now so weak that it cannot be expected to act to rein in corporatism or
any of its consequences, and that citizens need to step in;
- Michael Marx of Corporate Ethics International
referred us to their website's Corporate Strategic Initiative report
calling for putting corporations back into the service of people,
changing the market system through incentives and rewards in the public
interest, and restoration of the public commons.
I also especially enjoyed conversations with John Elkington of SustainAbility, Andrea Moffat and Anne Kelly of Ceres, Majorie Kelly of Tellus Institute (event organizers), Christine Moore of Austria's Credo organization, and Marc Le Menestrel of U Barcelona.
As usual, the most value from the conference came from corridor and
unscheduled discussions. Peter Senge co-hosted the meeting, but did not
present; there was no mention of Presence at this session, nor were its principles particularly evident in Peter's facilitation.
Highlight of the event, as I expected, was the opening address by Charles Handy
(pictured above), whose writing has been so instrumental to my thinking
about natural entrepreneurship. His comments focused on three main
themes:
- Nobody willingly gives up power: You need regulation, taxes, enforcement, rewards and mobilization of people to force a power shift;
- Modern capitalism is profoundly anti-democratic:
Its single goal is to increase consumption and the number of consumers,
and the one-vote-per-share system and emergency of oligopoly are
anathema to social equality, truly 'free' markets and longer-term
thinking; and
- Most problems are the result of great ideas with unintended consequences:
Most people in corporations really mean well, and it's the corporatist
political and economic system (rather than extreme greed) that produces
irresponsible and unsustainable behaviours, decisions and
'short-termism'.
He was telling us, I think, to be aware of
these realities and not be idealistic in understanding the challenges
of achieving change (and the impossibility of 'imposing' it), and the
importance of creating a level playing field to encourage corporations
to self-reform without fearing competitive disadvantage when doing so.
I had the chance to give him the outline and set-up chapter of my
upcoming book, so perhaps you'll see his name on my book-jacket.
I
don't think many of the presenters and attendees really 'got' Handy's
points, which was a shame. There's a terrible propensity I've noticed
among US progressives to reassure each other instead of admitting how
serious a problem is, to mistake consensus for action, and to overrely
on the emergence of some 'leader' to take America out of the darkness
of corporatism, conservatism, and irresponsibility. The non-US people I
spoke to almost all seemed to note this, and felt the result was
unwarranted optimism and a lack of substantial intention to actually do
anything.
Notwithstanding that, it was a great networking event,
and attracted an extraordinary mix of very bright and thoughtful
individuals. Brain candy, and great promise.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
