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A good citizen

This principle is often misunderstood as being about a business ramping up CSR activities to benefit specific causes or communities. These efforts are of course valuable and good but this Principle is about much more, it is about being a good citizen through the way the business operates in its core business (how it makes its money rather than how it spends it) and includes:

  • The impact that the business has on people that it does not have direct relationships with
  • The contribution that the business makes to society through how it structures its operations, to include obligations such as taxation
  • How the business sees itself as a social organisation which is interdependent – being a good citizen situates a business as part of society and not apart from society

Seeing people in all of their various roles in relation to the business – for example thinking of an employee or a customer as a citizen – opens up a different way of thinking about what they care about and the relationship the business has with them.  

Considers each person affected by its decisions

This builds on one of the core aspects of Blueprint thinking; each person is a someone not a something and one of the behaviours in our Framework: that Other people matter (Solidarity) – these together bring a sense of responsibility to consider all people affected directly or indirectly by the business.

It is a call to understand the consequences of decisions taken in all locations in which the impact would be felt, to seek to understand those impacts and consider them in the same way we would weigh the reaction of people we know. It is also a call to people to explore their world beyond their own circle, to experience the reality of how they and the business influences or could influence other people’s lives and aspirations.

Example:

A business needs to shut down some of their high street shops or factories – what implications are considered as part of the decision? Do they include the impact on other businesses in the area or on the wider community and what if any actions does the company seek to take to help mitigate any negative consequences?

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A large company prided itself on paying the living wage to its employees. It had negotiated contracts with a catering company that meant it could cancel orders at the last minute without financial penalties. It subsequently realised that one consequence of this was that the workers paid by the catering company were given very little notice that they were not needed, affecting their hours and the stability of their income. Once the company realised this, they re-negotiated their contract to allow for a longer notice period.

Access to opportunities for all

This is a spur to innovation and inclusiveness; if our goods are truly good and our services truly serve and working in our business helps develop people, shouldn’t that benefit be extended to more people?

Can some features be stripped out to lower the cost? Should the business recruit from different pools of talent? What is the impact on the local community of setting up a new operation? Can we set up operations specifically in a deprived area and give opportunities to local people, even if this increases initial training costs (perhaps set off by increased worker loyalty)? Is the investment a long term community relationship or dependent on short term financial or tax incentives?

Example:

Morrisons offered training schemes for young people locally alongside planning and building a new superstore. This meant that young unemployed people in the local community could directly benefit from the arrival of the new store.

Increasing access to work opportunities through techniques to avoid bias in recruitment, specific initiatives to provide work opportunities through apprenticeships, opportunities to show all can contribute no matter the extent of difference or disability are ways to show that other people matter and are capable of bringing their gifts to a wider community if they are given the opportunity.

Full and fair contribution to society… and taxation

Finally, there is the recognition of the role of government as an enabler of the common good rather than an unnecessary and expensive overhead that needs to be minimised.

  • Taxes are a source of funding for this common good. The illustrative action on taxes recognises that taxes are a contribution to society and so a full and fair contribution should be made. This acknowledges that the business benefits from a prospering society and is part of the stewardship ethos of contributing to a pooled effort (of contributing to taxes) where it can achieve more than individual action. This is an important framing of the business thinking and the business view on the role of taxes in contributing to the community that the business draws upon and relies on.
  • Fair contribution acknowledges that there are situations where unfair burdens should be resisted where there are genuinely bad motivations by some tax authorities and governments.
  • It also recognises that tax is a complex matter, not least because each country has its own laws, practices and priorities. The need is, to be honest and fair and responsive and responsible, and so the tax due should follow the business operations and contribute to the society within which the business makes its profits. Different countries have different rules and incentives for different entities and so there is of course no simple answer. The guiding principle is to ask whether the form in which the business operates is decided by reference to effectiveness of the operation of the business, or in order to subsidise the business by reducing tax payments through changing how the business operates.