The Challenge For Business: Improve Education
Our guest author today is Stanley Litow, Professor at Duke and Columbia Universities, where he teaches about the role of corporations in society, and the author of The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward. He formerly led Corporate Social Responsibility at IBM, where he was twice selected as CEO of the Year by Corporate Responsibility Magazine.
America's political climate is, in a word, toxic. The left and the right, which usually agree on nothing, seem to agree on one thing: animosity toward the sins of the private sector.
It's remarkable how American businesses are now portrayed as a major cause of many of our society’s ills: income inequality,the looming skills gap, education’s failure to prepare workers for the jobs of the future, and a shredded social safety net. That's the main reason that many prominent American business leaders of the Business Roundtable spoke out last week about businesses’ need to make a commitment to all stakeholders, not just their shareholders. It’s a necessary step, in my view. The new awakening, which many companies have already been embarking upon, demonstrates a willingness not to just placate their shareholders but recognize a corporation's responsibility to the broader community, a stable environment, improved schools and their employees. This is an imperative for communities but also for the business bottom line.
What, exactly, is a responsible company?