Corporate Structure
The B Corporation

The Benefit Corporation ... 5 Best Companies for Overall Impact from The B Corp Best for the World miratelinc.com ... a Burgess Comment

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

5 Best Companies for Overall Impact from The B Corp Best for the World miratelinc.com Toronto Call Centre, eBusiness and mail house specializing in fundraising services blogging about non-profit, CSR, social media and other business... 4 days ago Like CommentUnfollow Flag More Angela Parker, Jon Allen like this 1 comment Peter Burgess • I think the B Corp initiative and the related GIIRS evaluation system are a very important part of the reform of business that is so critical at this time. However, the metrics still leave a lot to the imagination. When I look at the financial reporting of any company, whether it is Exxon Mobil or Goldman Sachs or a small local bake shop, there is a common set of measures. There is the profit and there is the balance sheet which shows the assets employed in the business. The big companies and the small companies use essentially the same set of numbers and a pretty universal format. It is easy to have a conversation about the numbers. When I look at sustainability and impact reporting, there are various measures and star systems, but really nothing that is easy to talk about. I want something that will show me that Company A has a positive impact of 1 million units, and big bank B has a negative impact of 500 million units. My guess is that if there were to be a quantification of impact using some form of value units, we would see that the zillions of small organizations working hard to have positive impact are offset by a few huge banks and multinational companies that have huge negative value impact. I know that when I was a corporate CFO I could improve the company's profit by firing an American and outsourcing the work to China ... my company profits would go up say $20,000, that is $40,000 less salary etc for the American and $20,000 paid out to the outsourcing supply chain. For the company and its investors this is good. But what about the person that got fired and his/her family. They have $40,000 less. And what about the multiplier effect in the community (place). If the multiplier is just 2.5 ... it might be much bigger ... then the impact on the community is $100,000. Thus my company profits go up $20,000 and the individual goes down $40,000 and the community goes down $100,000. And that is only in year 1. What happens when this goes on for years, which is what is happening at the present time, and arguably has been in play already for many years. The money profit corporate economy has done well for about 40 years ... and perhaps longer. The impact dimension of the corporate success has been huge and negative for all of this time. The money profit economy has gutted the socio-economy of the United States (and much of Europe) while the multi-national corporations and banks have had huge success. CSR is an important idea ... but in my view it is not going to get much traction unless there are really good metrics that are part of the idea. GIIRS, IRIS and others are moving in the right direction ... but there is still a long way to go before the power of their metrics will match the power of money profit, stock prices and GDP growth metrics. Sincerely Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics 1 day ago• Delete 1