The rise and rise of conscious capitalism
Peter Cafferkey is quoted in an article in Tempus Magazine on what many are calling a turning point.
Image: San Francisco, USA (UnSplash).
On 16 January 2018, the world’s top CEOs woke up to a startling missive from one of their own. Laurence D. Fink, founder of BlackRock, the most influential investment firm on Earth, wrote: “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”
His letter, hailed as a pivotal moment in ‘conscious capitalism’, was all the more surprising having come from a CEO who, just four years previously, had claimed that activism harmed job creation. But Fink had since wised up: businesses that failed to engage with the community, he warned, would “ultimately lose the licence to operate from key stakeholders”
“The old method of philanthropy was that you could be a robber baron, pillage resources, do harm to the planet and treat your staff badly – but as you got closer to God, you could make up for it by buying everyone a library...”
