Social Business (SB) is a new journal launched in 2011 that seeks to provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge, experience, insights and ideas about the theory and practice of social business from both the academic and practitioner communities.
While the notion of ‘social business’ is central to all the world’s great philosophies, and is enshrined in the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would be done by”, capitalism and the advent of limited liability have focused attention on the maximisation of profitability for the benefit of shareholders. Inevitably, this focus has not always worked to the advantage of the larger society as is apparent in the fact that 20% of the people own 90% of the wealth and that more than one third of the world’s population live at or below the poverty line. And, to compound the problem, excessive consumption by the ‘rich’, and rapid population expansion have resulted in an unsustainable growth trajectory under which resources are being consumed more rapidly than they can be replaced or renewed.
Clearly, there is an urgent need to reconsider the current business model and replace it with one than can better serve the need to eliminate poverty and enhance human welfare. These then are the objectives of social business.
As might be expected, given the magnitude of the problem, many solutions have been proposed ranging from the ideas of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus for a ‘non-loss, non-dividend company’ to the approach to corporate social responsibility advocated by Unilever chairman Paul Polman. While all of these ideas and initiatives have an important contribution to make, there is clearly a need to synthesise and integrate them into a holistic solution and plan for action. The objective of Social Business is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics, policy makers and practitioners working towards this goal.
Social Business will address a wide range of subjects including:
- Corporate social responsibility
- Education
- Entrepreneurship
- Environmentalism and climate change
- Foreign Aid and Investment - 'Trade vs Aid?'
- Globalisation
- Innovation - social and technological
- Micro-credit and microfinance
- Sustainability
- Transformational marketing
- Green marketing
- Marketing for NPOs
- Social marketing - Volunteer and charitable organisations
- Well-being
Clearly, these issues go well beyond the scope of any single discipline. As such the ambition of Social Business is to attract contributions from scholars who seek the opportunity to apply their work to critical issues facing modern society whatever their specific academic discipline and to enjoy the synergistic benefits of such exchanges.
Social Business also seeks to attract contributions from practitioners actively engaged in embracing the challenge of a ‘new’ orientation to business and the development of effective strategies for integrating this into their ongoing and future operations. Companies such as Nirma and Hindustan Lever Ltd in India or Grameen Bank, Danone and Veolia Water in Bangladesh exemplify organisations that have successfully achieved this. However, irrespective of their origin or theme, all papers will be required to show how they contribute to the overall objective of social business.
Social Business seeks to attract contributions of two types:
- Action-based research that describes and diagnoses problems or issues associated with the major themes cited earlier, the actions taken to address them and the resulting outcomes. Generically, such research may be described as Practice-related Content,and will include Case Studies, Commentaries, Thought Pieces, Reviews etc.
- Conceptually based research of the kind where the researcher(s) identify an issue and seek to clarify it through the implementation of a study designed specifically for the purpose. Generically, such research may be described as Academic.
An extended description of both kinds of contribution may be found in the Guidelines for Authors section of the journal website.
Social Business
Vol. 2, 2012
Quarterly