KARL MOORE – This Is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, Talking Management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am delighted to speak to Christopher Marquis from the Harvard Business School.
There has been enormous growth in social entrepreneurship, where do you see it going these days?
CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS - I think the key thing with social responsibility these days is that companies really want to connect it with their bottom line, they want to connect it with their employees and it wants to be something that is much more integrated in the core of the business. In the past, very much, social responsibility activities were sort of on the periphery of the company - they were sort of standalone, silo, or office of the foundation. I think increasingly companies are trying to bring it into the core of the company to either help transform the identity of the company, have employees resonate more deeply with the mission of the company. So I think a key thing is that it is becoming more strategic and in a way that affects the company much more deeply.
KARL MOORE – Why do you think social responsibility really attracts young people these days?
CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS - I think there has been a number of surveys and studies that have really looked at how young professionals and young college graduates nowadays want something more out of their life then just a paycheque; they actually want some sort of value, and they want to sort of be motivated intrinsically. I think that increasingly finding some sort of social attribute of a job is one way to do that. I think that also that, particularly after the financial crisis of 2008, many people had questioned the marquetry of the economic model underlying the U.S., Canada and global capitalism. As that has been questioned, people have been looking to alternative models that may emphasize other stakeholder groups like the community or broader society. So I think that it is at a generational level, but also a broader shift in society that is leading to companies being much more focused on social responsibility.