B Lab Forces for Good Podcast: How Can Business Take Collective Action on Issues That Matter?
The Value of Working Together to Solve Global Crises
In the newest Forces For Good podcast we aim to discover how coalitions are built within industries and among businesses to drive sustainability, social change, and more.
This episode aims to answer the following questions:
- What are the advantages — and challenges — of taking action as a collective?
- What does ‘collective action’ really mean in practice?
Guests:
- Shaun Russell, Founder of Skandinavisk and Chair, B Corp Beauty Coalition
- Manjyot Ahluwalia, Regional Director Asia, The Global Methane Hub, formerly Senior Program Officer, World Wildlife Fund
- Amy Clarke, Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, Tribe Impact Capital and champion of the Better Business Act
Listen to this episode across all major platforms and find excerpts below.
Businesses are usually seen as competitors. They’re all vying for a contract, a consumer’s cash, or an ingredient source. But we also know that the crises facing our planet are too big for one entity to solve on its own. These crises demand that businesses work collaboratively and collectively to solve them.
Businesses that want to transform their industry can take some lessons from Shaun Russell of Skandinavisk and the B Corp Beauty Coalition. Alongside the other 11 members of the supervisory board, their goal is to set a course for what the coalition can achieve as a united entity.
Shaun Russell: You’re sitting around a table with, you know, some big brands, some small competitors that you’re on the shelves with in retail, for example. And there’s just this mutual intent to get your sleeves rolled up and dig in to fix the areas that we’ve already identified.
All members must pledge that intention to collaborate across the industry to reduce the environmental and social impacts resulting from the creation, distribution, sale, use and waste of beauty and cosmetic products.
We’ve already been approached by more than one potential new collective action initiative in other categories, asking us how do we put the infrastructure in place? Because they’d like to do something similar within their own category. And that’s reassuring because we’re not saying we’re the first. But from a category standpoint, we’re certainly one of the early movers.
The B Corp Beauty Coalition is not the first group to experience the power of Collective Action. Amy Clarke is the Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer at Tribe Impact Capital. She is also a Board Member of B Lab UK. She used a similar analogy to describe her work with thousands of businesses that are pushing for the passage of the Better Business Act. It would amend UK law, so that every single company in the UK takes ownership of its social and environmental impact.
Amy Clarke: There’s that wonderful proverb … if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We are in what I often refer to now as a marathon of sprints in terms of the issues that we’re facing is a long, intergenerational journey that is ahead of us. But we have to speed up.
We have to be willing to recognize that so much of the issues that we’re facing have been driven by global finance and global business. You know, we have extracted so much from so many systems, natural living systems, for such a long period of time, with no real regard for the consequences at all.
My experience in business and in finance has been that a lot of people are fearful of being their true selves in a work environment because they want to fit in. They feel that the institutional values of the institutional culture is such that you have to behave in a certain way to be able to get from A to B. And as a result, people often dilute themselves. And, you know, it’s the tyranny of convenience and the tyranny of culture. You will sacrifice the very things that are important to you in order to fit in.
It’s giving people that confidence to be able to express who they are and what they care about. And I think by doing that, it has such an extraordinary ripple effect through business, through finance, through the decision making. … You give people that sense of purpose and agency and belonging.
We all have agency, we all have the opportunity, and we all have the equity to create those little shifts. … Our ripples of influence meet other ripples of influence. And before you know it, you’re in a wave.
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to people and our planet. The only way we can find sustainable solutions is if everyone works together. Manjyot Ahluwalia pulls together alliance to drive climate action made up of schools, businesses, local governments, and other institutions.
Manjyot Ahluwalia: Whenever there are times when national governments may not be stepping up, there’s already this infrastructure or this bedrock of actors that are ready to take action and continue to push further for bold climate action.
We want to work with leaders. We want to work with climate leaders. But we also want to work with visionaries and those who want to take action. So we definitely want to make this inclusive in nature. And we do work with large companies, but we also work with small and medium enterprises, and we try to provide them with the resources they need to empower them to get on this journey of sustainability.
So I really think that companies or all entities must view themselves as not individuals but as actors in a community and how they can contribute to the wider community. … Companies can learn from each other and they are bound by certain requirements, if they are in the value chain or supply chain of that company. But I think there is a lot that companies can do to give back to the communities where they operate.
No one actor can show the way. It is a collective responsibility, and it will take all of us. It will take a paradigm shift in our humanity and what it means to be a human being. But I think we can and we must, because the future of our planet, our current and future generations, depends on this.
This article was originally published at https://www.bcorporation.net. B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
