The following article is from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business Executive Education, written by Cheung Kong EE
Source | Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business Executive Education (ID: CKGSB_EE)
In August 2019, a landmark manifesto was born.
Ceminos of 181 top U.S. companies, including Amazon founder Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook, signed a "Declaration of Corporate Purpose" in Washington.
This manifesto redefines the purpose of a company's operations: shareholder interests are no longer the most important goal of a company, and the company's first task is to create a better society.
An era of a new commercial civilization responsible for the human environment and responsible for all stakeholders has thus begun.
Some entrepreneurs who signed the Manifesto
来源：The New York Times
Business for good has become a representative of the new commercial civilization.
What is Business for Good?
Business for good means that commercial enterprises have an altruistic spirit when formulating visions, missions and values, and according to the genes and advantages of society, they create projects that can not only solve social and environmental problems, but also create economic value, rather than traditional enterprises doing public welfare.
When the concept of business for good enters China, how should Chinese CEOs understand this concept?
In the three-day course of "CHEUNG School of Business CEO Deep Action Learning Module - Sichuan-Chongqing Deep Dive", under the guidance of Professor Zhu Rui, a marketing professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, the students of Cheung Kong CEO Phase 14 and 15 deeply understood this concept and practice method through field visits to enterprises, alumni sharing, classroom discussions and other forms.
Let's listen to their exploration and thinking on "business for good".
(Each session is sorted by the student's surname in pinyin)
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Li Tao
President of Hengbang Shuanglin Group
Ceo of Changjiang 15 students
Each enterprise must combine its own practice and do what suits it according to the different stages of development.
I think that business for good starts with the reality around us. For example, as an enterprise, in the appropriate situation, improve its own standards and promote the level of products and services in the entire market. Treat employees well and provide more training and development opportunities. Treat partners kindly, truly form a business ecological community of co-creation, sharing and sharing with partners, create a relatively fair environment, pay on time, and respect each other. Every little effort can make the world a better place.
Ma Yingyao
Chairman and President of Qingdao Shangmei Life Group Co., Ltd
Ceo of Changjiang 14 students
We make hotel chains that allow people with a small amount of wealth to participate as investors in a mature business model, and the result is that everyone can still stay in a good hotel even if they travel to small places.
This is the business goodness that we've been practicing for the last 12 years, and we didn't know it was business goodness, we just did it because we wanted more users to benefit from it.
Zhang Jiangbo
Co-founder and Vice Chairman of PEACEBIRD Group Limited
As a company that has been established for 25 years, in the first ten years of the company, we only did public welfare, donated money and materials. In the early stage of the company, it is still necessary to do a good job in the company and create profits in order to return to the society and do more public welfare undertakings.
In recent years, PEACEBIRD has helped improve the process and design of local wax printing technology in a corresponding county in Guizhou, and incorporate it into the product system. In the procurement of raw material cotton, we have made strategic cooperation with upstream cotton spinning factories and printing and dyeing factories to achieve carbon neutrality. In addition, fruits and vegetables from poor mountainous areas are purchased in canteens, and the concept of business for good is practiced in the daily life of enterprises.
Zhao Xiangdong
Chairman of Zhongtian Northwest Construction Investment Group Co., Ltd
In the traditional construction industry, improving the process and implementing the modular construction of finished and semi-finished products can ensure the quality of building products on the one hand, and also reduce the waste of materials and the impact on the environment through the improvement of technology and technology.
The traditional construction method brings dust, noise operation and other pollution to the environment is more serious. I think the new model is a way of doing business for good.
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Chen Tong
Vice President of E Fund Management Limited
At first, we only spontaneously made some donations to poor students by the company and employees, donated to the primary school in the Yingxiu area during the Wenchuan earthquake, and later established the E Fangda Education Foundation, but this was only a small kindness.
What is more important is the goodness of the enterprise, that is, the balance between the interests of the holders, shareholders and employees. In 2019, the CSRC implemented the fund investment adviser pilot, which is the first time that the industry has carried out reform to establish a buyer's agency system, which ensures that we must fully stand in the interests of customers and allocate the most suitable fund portfolio for the whole market to the customer, rather than putting the scale of his own company's fund in the first place.
On the investment side, we gradually realize that investment should contribute to society, assume corporate social responsibility, and invest in enterprises and industries that have a positive role in promoting society. On the other hand, we also continuously reduce the rate of passive products, and increase the return on investment of customers by reducing their investment costs.
Chi Jingchao
Chairman and Founding Partner of Skyhawk Capital
SkyHawk Capital has been helping China's world-class technology manufacturing enterprises. In the way of capital plus industry, we give up the opportunity to make quick money, focus on technology-based manufacturing, and pay attention to how intelligent manufacturing can help enterprise transformation.
We also initiated the Manufacturing Society in the Yangtze River. In the future, we will continue to promote the digitalization of China's manufacturing enterprises and continue to promote industrial upgrading.
Liu Xiaodong
Executive Director and President of HC Holdings Limited
Zhongguancun Online, there have been two phases in the past two decades. In the first decade, it became the world's largest technology Internet media company, and it has invested heavily in technology development and talent training, benefiting society and employees. In recent years, the media industry has shrunk, taking care of existing employees and seeking new business growth in the SaaS space has become our focus.
When the business experiences a downward cycle, how to achieve business for good? I believe that through the ability of self-technology iteration, it is what we should do to serve small and medium-sized brand customers and small and medium-sized channel providers, and enhance their business competitiveness and operational efficiency.
Xu Jun
CEO of Morgan Stanley (China) Equity Investment Management Co., Ltd
Our company initially did public welfare activities, but it was not yet a business for good. True business for good is how to altruism and return to society in the main business.
Our company has now requested the inclusion of ESG factor assessments in our global investment operations and has institutionally arranged them to focus on environmental protection, labor welfare, supplier anti-corruption, and corporate governance structures. Now that ESG has developed a set of standards in the investment community, China, although it is just getting started, has already integrated into this megatrend.
Zhao Lumiao
Partner, Agile Investments Group
I have been investing in the semiconductor, new energy and medical industries for 20 years in Hong Kong, China and the United States. On the science and technology for good, I would like to share with you my investment in these three industry technology leading companies.
Zhongwei Semiconductor is the enterprise with the highest scientific and technological content in China's semiconductor equipment industry, and the bottleneck of China's chip development lies in the most upstream equipment field, so enterprises with etching 5nm and MOCVD technology such as Zhongwei can break through the technological blockade of the United States on China and dare not easily sanction China's equipment field, which is the biggest business good that determines China's national transportation.
BYD in the new energy industry, in the DM-i hybrid platform and lithium iron phosphate blade battery first in the world, Europe, the United States and Japan leaders are using Chinese technology, for the world's carbon neutrality has made great contributions.
We have also invested in more than a dozen projects by academician Zhong Nanshan's team, who has made great contributions to the prevention and treatment of respiratory infectious disease viruses to treat diseases and save people and health.
These three areas are closely related to national development, life and health. Our investment in hardcore technology innovation companies takes into account both economic and social benefits.
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Li Gang
Director and General Manager of South China Materials Group Co., Ltd
The enterprise for good can be elaborated from three dimensions.
First, employees are the most basic driving force for the survival and development of enterprises, the most core competitiveness, and it is necessary to design employee training and promotion mechanisms from the institutional level.
Second, the company previously had an option and dividend rights system. Since the previous year, the group has implemented a partnership system to give employees a sense of ownership. The core value of the group is to create value for customers, in the process of making the enterprise bigger and stronger and then specializing, pursue altruism, and customers coexist and win-win.
Third, at the social level, the materials used in Leishen Mountain and Vulcan Mountain during the epidemic period were donated by our enterprises, and we also donated to the government and the Red Cross, which is the social responsibility of enterprises.
In the process of running a business, we should also treat creditors and stakeholders well. Business for good is in line with the concept of healthy and high-quality development of enterprises in the new era.
Song Rui
President of Chengdu Yuntu Holdings Co., Ltd
Our company is the only whole industry chain enterprise in the compound fertilizer industry. My understanding of business for good is that business is the process of value creation, and goodness is a good wish, persistence, and vision.
In Yuntu's corporate culture, there are two words: "kindness" and "benevolence", which can put business for good.
The business activities of enterprises are the process of value creation. The first is social value, active taxation and reasonable control of pollution in chemical production. The second is the value of farmers, that is, the user, and the training is carried out to educate them on how to use cost-effective new fertilizers. The third is the value of employees, ensuring the life safety of front-line employees, eliminating production safety hazards, and giving employees a better salary level. Finally, there is shareholder value. The balance between these four has an unprecedented height in our company, and only by putting the balance of the four values in place can the enterprise develop.
Xu Yanming
Chairman and General Manager of Zhuhai Guanyu Battery Co., Ltd
I believe that the company can continue to create positive value for the society in a legal and compliant manner, which is the greatest good of the enterprise.
The mission of our company is to create value for society. The batteries we produce belong to green energy, which is itself a product for good, and these inherent self-requirements for goodness make us want to make the enterprise bigger and stronger when practicing the enterprise to be good.
And enterprises to be bigger and stronger, we must and our excellent customers such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Huawei, etc. closely together, these excellent customers themselves are positive to good enterprises, they in addition to the technology, quality, cost and other aspects of our requirements, but also need us to be close to the values, positive to good, they will be in the social responsibility of the enterprise to conduct a strict review, so that we have the inherent good drive outside, from the outside to promote the enterprise to practice business to a greater extent to good.
Yan Kun
Shenzhen Lihui Motor Co., Ltd. / Dongguan Lihui Motor
Chairman and General Manager of The Company Limited
Our company's product motors are mainly used in household electrical, medical equipment, automotive and other fields. Business for good is the big trend, as a company that produces products, I think the greatest good is to do their own products to the extreme, constantly innovate, so that shareholders, customers and stakeholders to achieve the most satisfaction.
Kindness needs to start from a daily life, such as improving the canteen of employees. Another example is to send factories to the countryside, so that workers can go home at night to take care of their families, and also to let left-behind people have relevant employment opportunities. More importantly, environmental governance, in sewage and exhaust emissions, increase equipment investment. With the extensive use of automated production lines, noise will affect the mood of workers, and we have carried out equipment replacement to control noise.
There is a natural contradiction between goodness and cost, and if goodwill is not related to the core business, corporate genes, and social pain points, it is difficult to do this for a long time. Now environmental governance has become the core competitiveness of enterprises, which is the best channel for business to land for good.
Zeng Chen
General Manager of Zhuzhou Hongda Electronics Co., Ltd
Doing business is itself business for good. A business is a social organization that reallocates resources and profits by providing services and products to customers. In this process, the enterprise has a series of stakeholders, and balancing the relationship between all parties can continue to do a good job.
Business for Good is a process of continuous improvement, doing better every day than before. From the perspective of enterprises, business for good needs to be related to the main business, the company to the technology entrepreneurship incubation platform transformation, to encourage more entrepreneurs with technology to start a business, so that localization devices can eventually be adopted. In daily operations, the company pays upstream and downstream suppliers in a timely manner, purchases tea produced in poor counties for gifts, and sets up employee funds, all of which practice business for good in a little bit.
How can companies better practice in understanding the aftermath of business?
Professor Zhu Rui gave her method in class:
1/ Establish common benefit values
2/ Find and discover the combination points of business and social pain points
3/ Establish a comprehensive system guarantee
From the first day of its establishment, Yangtze River has attached great importance to corporate social responsibility and responsibility. We believe that the new generation of business leaders must have three core spirits:
First, global vision, global value docking, global resource integration, global responsibility;
Second, humanistic care and social responsibility;
Third, the spirit of innovation.
In the 18 years since its establishment, Yangtze River has gone through exploration, innovation and practice from 1.0 to 4.0 in terms of corporate social responsibility and management education innovation.
Click here to view the "Evolutionary History of Social Responsibility in the Yangtze River"
Yangtze River Social Responsibility 1.0:
As early as 2005, Changjiang took the lead in systematically introducing the humanities curriculum into management education, which may be the first business school in the world to systematically advocate and develop humanistic education. It is hoped that this will lead the world's management education from "art" to "Tao", cultivate business leaders with humanistic care and social responsibility, carry forward the historical concept and long-term thinking, and promote economic development and social progress with business and social innovation.
Yangtze River Social Responsibility 2.0:
Changjiang has always attached importance to guiding students to pay attention to the entire cycle of wealth, from why and how to do business, to how to use wealth.
Since 2010, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business has pioneered the EMBA 48-hour public welfare hour system in the world, and students must complete 48 hours of public welfare activities to graduate; since 2014, it has once again taken the public welfare and social responsibility course as the "first lesson" of EMBA; since 2017, it has introduced 24-hour compulsory public welfare hours and "public welfare first lesson" in MBA, FMBA and other degree programs; at the same time, Cheung Kong pioneered the establishment of public welfare scholarships (2002) and The Yangtze River Charity Fund (2009) , Changjiang Charity Award (2014) and other leading innovations, constantly expand the logic of business education, attach importance to public welfare courses and social responsibility, and advocate "no public welfare, no Yangtze River".
Yangtze River Social Responsibility 3.0:
In recent years, the world has generally faced three major problems, such as uneven distribution of income and wealth, decline in social mobility and class solidification, and sustainable development. None of these social problems can be solved by any one of the governments, enterprises or non-governmental organizations alone and effectively. The three must work together, collaborate and innovate, and promote economic development and social progress with science and technology, business, and social innovation.
Based on this, since 2018, Yangtze River has raised the traditional public welfare and social responsibility to a new height, once again pioneering the social innovation curriculum as a compulsory course for all degree programs, advocating that enterprises not only pursue innovation for the sake of wealth creation, but also explore innovation to solve social development problems and promote the construction of a harmonious society.
Yangtze River Social Responsibility 4.0:
Facing the future, Changjiang has expanded the vision of responsibility from China to the world, is committed to cultivating a group of subversive forces of the new generation of the economy that attaches importance to social innovation for the world, and contributes Chinese solutions and Chinese wisdom to global problems. Focus on income and wealth inequality, decline in social mobility, provide young people with upward channels and possibilities, and contribute solutions from China to major global problems.
This year, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business began to try from the EMBA program, on the basis of public welfare hours, it took the lead in launching social innovation and business for good practice courses, so as to promote Yangtze River entrepreneur trainees to practice public welfare in a more sustainable, innovative and professional way, and combine their own enterprises to carry out business for good innovation.
In the next year, each EMBA student will design and implement a business good project with both economic value and social value in combination with the main business and its own advantages of the enterprise, and the concept of business for good will be actually implemented into the practice of the enterprise.
Social innovation and business for good is the trend of the global trend, requiring entrepreneurs to have a strong sense of responsibility and mission, to help social development as their responsibility, beyond the traditional economic interest maximization thinking, the personal interests, business operations into the overall interests of society.
Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business is actively guiding entrepreneurs to learn and practice this concept in various project classrooms, amplifying the power of Chinese entrepreneurs to "do good".