Intro music | Fun Day by Bensound
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Transcript
My name is Andy Dosev, and I will be your host. It seems appropriate for me to tell you a little bit about myself and why I started this podcast before we dove headfirst into the show. This will only take a few minutes I promise.
I am a marketer by profession. I have been working in the industry for a few years. But in my Junior year of University, I discovered my passion. Ethical business. I realized that when my professor, Maria Ballesteros-Sola introduced me to B-Corporations. B-Corps are specially certified companies that focus on using business as a force of good. The definition of good varies, but the point is that there is a greater goal than profits. While I was initially drawn to Patagonia a B-Corp, and it's environmental CSR initiatives, I quickly realized that there was so much more to be done with this philosophy. The world is in need of leaders to guide us forward and to set clear ethical guidelines. These leaders are needed to build a society that considers all stakeholders and attempts to find the best solution for all.
What is a stakeholder? By definition, it is anyone who can be affected by a company's pursuit of its goals. Or anyone that can directly affect a company's pursuit of its goals. The stakeholder theory makes a case that long term success comes from managers considering both of these. Unfortunately, we see a lot of the opposites occurring today. A few examples include communities affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, workers in hazardous sweatshops, price gauging of medicine for patients, or anyone else that is directly affected by a company's actions or inactions.
The reason I am starting this project now is that I am concerned about the future. I don't want to sit on the sidelines anymore as unethical decisions destroy our world. Literally, and societally.
The Stakeholder Theory as a field of study was born in 1984 when R. Edward Freeman wrote Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. His book discussed the philosophy of what it meant to be a stakeholder and how taking them into account was favorable for companies. His compilation of countless previous research sparked a fire in this literature, and the last 4 decades have seen increasingly more research into the subject. Companies began experimenting with it and making it their own. B Lab, the non-profit that certifies companies to become B-Corporations is an example of that. Requiring the companies in their network to add verbiage in their official documents to keep themselves accountable.
Accountability and reporting is an important concept in the Stakeholder theory.
The goal of this podcast is to shine a light on more ethical business practices. I agree with B-Lab's mission statement, that business can be used as a force of good. Together we will learn how to consider the ethics of business decisions to serve a greater good. To achieve more than just profits. And to aid more than just the shareholders.
I want to spark a conversation in workplaces where business decisions are considered amoral.
Simply I want to get to the bottom of the question, What's at stake.
