This morning I skimmed through The Social Role of Business, Snapshot 2010: Stories of business engagement in the social space, and Business Guide: Engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility, all published by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development.
The theme was on 'businesses can't succeed in societies that fail' and really rallied for business to be included at the table of government and non-governmental organisations when they discuss solutions for social issues. I agree with them, they have the resources and expertise (through a different lens) to really get involved in those discussions... after all, they are usually also the most efficient entities for getting things done! The higher the urgency of changes needed gets the more I tend to want to stress this point. Having gone through the first wave of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (the very tame version of what is really needed) they are also open to real engagement; I think we have mostly all moved past thinking just throwing money at the problem solves things, no?! Really thinking things through, getting at root causes, and having all three sectors of society engaging is our best hope for adopting systems that will head the issues in the right direction.
One of the larger think tanks out there working to combining the three sectors to achieve sustainable development is Forum for the Future.
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