Two leading economists present a new model for sustainable capitalism based on the economics of mutuality. For decades, leaders in the business world have believed that their sole responsibility is to maximize profit for shareholders. But this obsessive focus was a major cause of the abuses that nearly sunk the global economy in 2008. While books like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century have exposed the shortcomings of financial capitalism, Completing Capitalism goes further by describing a well-developed, field-tested alternative. In this analytically rigorous and eminently practical book, Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub offer a more complete form of capitalism, one that delivers superior financial performance precisely because it mobilizes and generates human, social, and natural capital along with financial capital. Offering practical, real-world illustrations, Roche and Jakub describe how their model has been implemented in live business pilots in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.
This is the first book to provide a precise description of how companies can put purpose into practice. Based on groundbreaking research undertaken between Oxford University and Mars Catalyst, it offers an accessible account of why corporate purpose is so important and how it can be implemented to address the major challenges the world faces today.
What is business for? Day one of a business course will tell you: it is to maximise shareholder profit. This single idea pervades all our thinking and teaching about business around the world but it is fundamentally wrong, Colin Mayer argues. It has had disastrous and damaging consequences for our economies, environment, politics, and societies. In this urgent call for reform, Prosperity challenges the fundamentals of business thinking. It sets out a comprehensive new agenda for establishing the corporation as a unique and powerful force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense - for customers and communities, today and in the future. First Professor and former Dean of the Säid Business School in Oxford, Mayer is a leading figure in the global discussion about the purpose and role of the corporation. In Prosperity, he presents a radical and carefully considered prescription for corporations, their ownership, governance, finance, and regulation. Drawing together insights from business, law, economics, science, philosophy, and history, he shows how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few. Prosperity tells us not only how to create and run successful businesses but also how policy can get us there and fix our broken system.
The image of modern corporations has been shaped by a profits over people approach, but we are at a point where business must take the lead in healing the crises of our time. The Healing Organization shows how corporations can become healing forces. Conscious Capitalism pioneer Raj Sisodia and organizational innovation expert Michael J. Gelb were inspired to write this book because of the epidemic of unnecessary suffering connected with business, including the destruction of the environment; increasing numbers living paycheck-to-paycheck and barely surviving; and rising rates of depression and stress leading to chronic health problems. Based on extensive in-depth interviews and inspiring case studies, Sisodia and Gelb show how companies such as Shake Shack, Hyatt, KIND Healthy Snacks, Eileen Fisher, H-E-B, FIFCO, Jaipur Rugs and DTE Energy are healing their employees, customers, communities and other stakeholders. They represent a diverse sampling of industries and geographies, but they all have significant elements in common, besides being profitable enterprises: Their employees love coming to work. They have passionately loyal customers. They make a significant positive difference to the communities they serve. They preserve and restore the ecosystems in which they operate. The enmity and dividedness between those who champion unfettered capitalism and those who advocate socialism is exacerbating rather than solving our problems. In a world that urgently needs healing on many levels, this is a movement whose time has come. The Healing Organization shows how it can be done, how it is being done, and how you can begin to do it too.
Showing how the short-term thinking spawned by shareholder primacy lies at the root of our current economic malaise and social breakdown, this sobering depiction offers concrete actions that capitalists themselves can take to create a better future. --
Robust financial markets support capitalism, they don't imperil it. But in 2008, Washington policymakers were compelled to replace private risk-takers in the financial system with government capital so that money and credit flows wouldn't stop, precipitating a depression. Washington's actions weren't the start of government distortions in the financial industry, Nicole Gelinas writes, but the natural result of 25 years' worth of such distortions. In the early eighties, modern finance began to escape reasonable regulations, including the most important regulation of all, that of the marketplace. The government gradually adopted a "too big to fail" policy for the largest or most complex financial companies, saving lenders to failing firms from losses. As a result, these companies became impervious to the vital market discipline that the threat of loss provides. Adding to the problem, Wall Street created financial instruments that escaped other reasonable limits, including gentle constraints on speculative borrowing and requirements for the disclosure of important facts. The financial industry eventually posed an untenable risk to the economy -- a risk that culminated in the trillions of dollars' worth of government bailouts and guarantees that Washington scrambled starting in late 2008. Even as banks and markets seem to heal, lenders to financial companies continue to understand that the government would protect them in the future if necessary. This implicit guarantee harms economic growth, because it forces good companies to compete against bad. History and recent events make clear what Washington must do. First, policymakers must reintroduce market discipline to the financial world. They can do so by re-creating a credible, consistent way in which big financial companies can fail, with lenders taking their warranted losses. Second, policymakers can reapply prudent financial regulations so that markets, and the economy, can better withstand inevitable excesses of optimism and pessimism. Sensible regulations have worked well in the past and can work well again. As Gelinas explains in this richly detailed book, adequate regulation of financial firms and markets is a prerequisite for free-market capitalism -- not a barrier to it.
The Antiracist Business Book is the first of its kind, as DEI business coach Trudi Lebrón offers business owners real-life lessons on how to build, reshape, and re-envision their work to support and repair the wealth of all people.
Compassionate Capitalism is a historical look at the birth and developmet of capitalism. You will learn how capitalism first developed as God worked among the Hebrew people in Old Testament times. The resultant economic principles spread with Christianity and transformed the Western World. Over the years, conflicts arose, wars ensued, and struggles continue today over the just distribution of wealth. It remains for us to apply the principles of capitalism with Godly compassion. We need a revolution of compasionate capitalism!
Business as Mission (BAM) is a growing global movement. Christians active in the arena of business, charity and ministry are on a journey to integrate business with holistic mission. But what exactly is BAM? In this book, Gea Gort and Mats Tunehag explain the BAM concept through theory and theology, with stories to show what it looks like in real life. The authors explain that Business as Mission is an expression of a much broader movement. Ideas regarding mission, church, and charity are shifting, and growing number of Christians are aiming for a missional way of living out the whole incarnated gospel in their daily lives where they work and live. The inspiring stories of thirty practitioners active on all continents provide insight into how the gospel can be shared in innovative and practical ways in challenging settings: in developing nations, secularized Western cities, or even closed countries. This book will not only capture your mind and heart as you learn about Business as Mission in theory and praxis, but it will also give you a broad overview of this remarkable movement. This book provides insight into this global movement and is of interest for a broad range of people: pioneers, early adapters and leaders within church, missionaries, and business leaders, as well as for Bible schools and universities. Dr. Gea Gort, a trained journalist, studied Transformational Leadership in the Global Urban Context at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, where she serves as adjunct faculty and regional board member. She is passionate about innovative mission in an urban and global context. In her hometown of Rotterdam (Holland), she initiated City Prayer, directed a Christian leaders network, and advised the government on multicultural affairs. Gea has authored several books in Dutch and in English. Mats Tunehag is a speaker, writer, and consultant from Sweden. For over twenty years, he has focused on developing the Business as Mission (BAM) concept as well as national, regional, and global strategic alliances of people and BAM initiatives. A global lecturer, he is also a BAM senior leader in the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance.
A compelling look at the B Corp movement and why socially and environmentally responsible companies are vital for everyone’s future Businesses have a big role to play in a capitalist society. They can tip the scales toward the benefit of the few, with toxic side effects for all, or they can guide us toward better, more equitable long-term solutions. Christopher Marquis tells the story of the rise of a new corporate form—the B Corporation. Founded by a group of friends who met at Stanford, these companies undergo a rigorous certification process, overseen by the B Lab, and commit to putting social benefits, the rights of workers, community impact, and environmental stewardship on equal footing with financial shareholders. Informed by over a decade of research and animated by interviews with the movement’s founders and leading figures, Marquis’s book explores the rapid growth of companies choosing to certify as B Corps, both in the United States and internationally, and explains why the future of B Corporations is vital for us all.
