In the Future, Companies Will Survive Only if They Help Solve Big Social Problems
In the Future, Companies Will Survive Only if They Help Solve Big Social Proble…
This article is by Paul Klein, founder and president, Impakt, and Milinda Martin, vice president, community investment, corporate brand, and reputation, Time Warner Cable.
January 1, 2025, Irving, Texas: Exxon Mobil is proud to announce that its exit from the extraction and production of nonrenewable resources is now complete. Back in 2015 the company began its 10-year journey out of fossil fuels by committing itself to a bold set of changes that have transformed the company and indeed the world. Key actions over the past decade include:
- hiring a new chief executive, formerly the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that believes economic prosperity and environmental stewardship go hand in hand;
- being certified as a B-Corporation, a designation stipulating a material positive impact on society and the environment;
- introducing a new class of shares whose value reflects both financial and environmental performance; and
- transforming more than 10,000 Exxon and Mobil stations into local centers of sustainable transportation where customers can recharge their electric vehicles, buy or rent bicycles, and purchase discounted passes for local transit systems.
While this scenario sounds far-fetched, new research we conducted with Microsoft, Nestlé, Pfizer and Telus International reveals that announcements like this one may not be that unusual in 2025. “An intersection is coming where society will expect corporations to fill the void in the face of government cuts, and, likewise, corporations will expect their societal influence to increase as their social capital becomes the force of change in communities, countries and even entire global industries,” said Jeffrey Puritt, president of TELUS International.
We predict that 2015 will mark the beginning of a long-term transition of the role and purpose of the world’s largest public companies and the value chains they control. This shift will start with an acknowledgment that despite years of implementing initiatives designed to make the companies more “responsible,” real progress on climate change and other global issues has remained incremental. The new imperative for business leaders will be to embrace the idea that the viability of their businesses depends on solving the world’s most pressing societal issues.
“More or less all business started out with a social purpose of some kind, so the future may look more like a rediscovery of the social purpose of business,” said Paul Bakus, president of corporate affairs at Nestlé. “What’s been lost in recent decades is the long term perspective, values-based behaviors grounded in respect, and interconnectivity between the needs of society and the innovative dynamism of business.”
Today, corporations that connect the dots between social issues and business solutions are seen as leaders. But we are moving toward a time when leadership will mean having the courage to stake a much bigger claim. “Today our social investments focus on providing access to medicines and building health care capacity for those most in need,” said Caroline Roan, vice president for corporate responsibility at Pfizer and president of the Pfizer Foundation. “Ultimately, we are striving to create a commercial structure that will allow us to ensure that our medicines are used effectively and provided in an affordable and sustainable way to everyone who needs them.”
For millennials, who are often cited as the generation that will change the world, and who will make up the next wave of business leaders, this degree of commitment will be the rule rather than the exception. At Microsoft, this is taking shape with programs such as Tech for Good, focusing on providing software donations and cash grants to nonprofit organizations, and YouthSpark, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world in the areas of computer science education, employment, and entrepreneurship. “As this generation grows up and continues to shape the world, we will still see companies selling products—that certainly won’t go away—but we’ll see an even stronger desire for companies to be good corporate citizens with a ‘serving communities’ mission ingrained in their cultures,” said Lori Forte Harnick, general manager for citizenship and public affairs at Microsoft.
Further, a recent study by MSLGROUP, The Future of Business Citizenship, suggests that amid the emerging social purpose of business, millennials in positions of leadership will put the interests and priorities of their employees ahead of customers and shareholders. This re-ranking of stakeholders will be based on the belief that external value (higher profits and better products and services) is created by recognizing the interconnectivity of business and community and engaging employees to actively participate in improving both.
