As Nobel Prize-winning microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus struggles to hang on to the top post at Grameen Bank, we can’t help but hope that his original vision for lending to the poor and his call to create “social business” don’t get lost in the dust-up.
Yunus is under pressure from the Central Bank of Bangladesh to step down as managing director of Grameen in what Yunus supporters are characterizing as a politically motivated attack.
Our own sense is that Yunus is being unfairly targeted. But no matter what happens to the man, what’s most important is that his ideas don’t get dragged down with him. As we’ve discussed, we think that Peter Drucker would have been in synch with Yunus’s push to foster a whole class of companies capable of competing in the marketplace but whose primary aim is to meet a clear social need, not to maximize profits.
“An organization is not like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species,” Drucker wrote. “An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.”
Drucker took a similar view, once noting that his work is rooted in the notion that “people are diverse, often unpredictable, always multidimensional.”
What do you think: Can “social business” ever find its way to the mainstream of the marketplace, or will it always be relegated to the fringes?
Muhammad Yunus
Social isuues are like rocket fuel to the engine. Once you fire up the engine you are going to move but whereto is up to the navigator, not the pilot.
GD Goldshine
Bangladesh politics are brutal with more focus on power for the party in power, rather than what is good for the nation. There has also been an over expansion of micro finance that has fueled a bubble that is being used against all micro finance (and also allows the current people in power to stay there).
I would certainly hope so. We need more people like Muhammad Yunus to promote social business and to develop our personal social conscience at the same time, because social business needs socially conscious consumers. We’re all responsible.
Looking at many former public utilities, we notice that their privatization often did not result in consumer benefits. Here social business can and should play an important role.
God created a one-dimensional human being to play a role in this lifetime. Not all humans have the ability to be leaders. To be a leader: business, political, religious, manager…, is necessary to educate, train, instruct.
Whit this in mind, profit maximization is a function of utility and utility is directly related to the process of give and receive. Is offered but also demand and also generally ruler expected profits. Profits are based on horizons and expectations and the cost benefit.
These relations are running a direct function of a given observer establishes a particular kind of union between them. The form how we act depends on the particular type of observer who we are.
Dios creó un ser humano unidimensional para desempeñar un papel en esta existencia. No todos los seres humanos tenemos la facultad de ser líderes. Para ser líder: empresarial, político, religioso, directivo…, es necesario educar, formar, instruir.
Con esto en mente, la maximización del beneficio está en función de utilidad y la utilidad está directamente relacionada con el proceso de dar y de recibir. Se ofrece pero también se demanda y además, por regla general, se esperan ganancias. Las ganancias están fundamentadas en horizontes y expectativas y en el costo beneficio.
Estas relaciones se ejecutan en función directa de un determinado observador que establece un particular tipo de unión entre ellas. La forma como actuamos depende del tipo particular de observador que somos.
IN SEARCH OF SUSTAINING HI-TRUST PURPOSES’ RISING EXPONENTIALS
Social Business is ultimately about transparently questioning -actioning and communally learning – what is the most purposeful design that trillion dollar global industry sectors are capable of from the perspective of future generations. That was the core goal that 8 million poorest asian women and one man designed into Grameen over its first 35 years of existence and which Nordica’s Nobel awarded them its 2006 prize for. It is based on multi-win models whose metrics value investing in compound sustainable consequences. Compare this with MBAs’ extreme wall street metric of how much does one most powerful side take from every other every quarter- this propagates the greatest mathematical error of all time – that of being governed by big systems which rule with the least sustainable valuation and badwill reward metrics and communicate misinformation. Refer to Goodwill’s Unseen Wealth research of Brookings and Georgetown in 2000 which warned of what risks would compound unseen if the knowledge network economy spins this erroneous paradigm in the way that humans are integrated locally and globally as technology makes us more connected than separated. Or go back to my dad’s survey as far back as 1972 in The Economist on the next forty years which identified a list of macroeconomic quick fixes that were made by big gov after the world wars and fail the criterion our human race used to freely value most : investing in our children and communities that sustain their and nature’s development safely. Or reread Einstein’s comments on the relevance of Gandhi’s and Montessori’s transformation beyond the top-down empire system that had over time compounded the opposite of freedom and happiness of Indian peoples.
Keynes’ General Theory identified the crisis that increasingly only economics rules the world thus begging today’s urgent 64 trillion dollar question : do we want to be subject to orwellian big brother rules that compound risks onto those with least voice and through boundaries of systems which are not designed to interface safely nor with enough quality to offer life critical services affordably for all through time. Thinking about the future of my child- J’accuse macroeconomics designs of healthcare , energy including natue’s waters and food chains, mass media, education, banking, place governments, globalisation of professions biassed towards the big get bigger as not being designed in ways that sustain joyful or productive futures of children nor of emotionally intelligent co-workers. There was a fleeting moment in 2009 when most of young america seemed to know this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzEajBQ9gmQ and it was echoed in September 2010 when two thirds of Congress again fleetingly voted for a testimony from Yunus as the genius microeconomist of our times. Last summer in memory of my father http://www.macrae.tv his estate provide social business loans so that Adam Smith alumni at Glasgow University could launch a new Journal of Social Business empowering youth to question which economics does the net generation want to be ruled by. It is time for social business mediation to entrepreneurially audit all the biggest systems in the world and where they are dinsivesting in the future of youth to simultaneously repeal them. When politicians of any nation call Yunus a local matter they reveal that they are poverty bchaining people to millennium 2 constitutions which simply do not open up enough innovative capability to empower 7 billion good jobs and worthwhile lifetimes and other 3rd millennium goals. If you agree that Drucker believed the networked age could innovate sufficient increase in human productivity out of every community then please vote for Drucker and Yunus as innovatively being of the same system of systems mindset. What we need next is to collaborate around a Yunus Fund to be the laregst investment fund in youth.
One way Europe can test market this is by turning dormant bank accounts into social business funds geared to 2020 goals youth vote for as most exciting to network and celebrate now. If the Olympics is truly the greatest stage for celebrating youth then why not survey and publish youth goals as a world service beyond the games http://www.futureofbbc.com
I believe Drucker voted for multi-win models of productivity and demand. I wonder if your opening question is phrased the right way round – why not ask: will we be in time to free ourselves from markets that are not economic in terms of sustaining communities and advancing heroic goals for the future that a survey of the net generation can come up with. Journal of Social Business editors and I welcome other good news ideas on how to action and map youth’s greatest purposes.