B Corp Workbook (Non-Members)

This book was made possible by the Twente Board, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and Eshuis Accountants and Advisors and is translated into English by PrimeGlobal.

© 2021 Mark de Lat and Aldo van Duivenboden

1st edition, April 2021, in Dutch 2nd edition, October 2021, in Dutch 3rd edition, September 2022, in Dutch 4th PrimeGlobal edition, November 2022

Subject to the exceptions provided for in or pursuant to the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in an automated data file, or made public in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent of the publisher. Insofar as making copies of this publication is permitted under Art. 16h Copyright Act 1912, the legally owed fees must be paid to the Reprorecht Foundation (PO Box 3060, 2130 KB Hoofddorp). For the copying of (a) part(s) from this publication in an anthology, readers and other compilation works (art. 16 Copyright Act 1912), one can contact the Pro Foundation (Stichting Publicatie- en Reproductierechten Organisatie, PO Box 3060, 2130 KB Hoofddorp, www.cedar.nl/pro).

Although the utmost care has been taken in the preparation of this publication, the author(s), editor(s) and publisher accept no liability for any errors and omissions, nor for the consequences thereof.

NUR 801 ISBN 9789090366937

Publication: In-house by Mark de Lat and Aldo van Duivenboden Printing: Van Marle Printing Company, Hengelo (Ov), The Netherlands Translation: Translationagency Perfect, Enschede, The Netherlands and Prime Global

Table of contents

Foreword 5 Preface by Stephen Heathcote 7 1. Introduction 8 2. Why B Corp? 11 3. The B Corp standard 17 Interview: Koninklijke Van Wijhe Verf, Paint Manufacturer, Netherlands. 22 4. Mission, vision and governance 25

Theoretical perspectives 25 B Corp: what does the standard require?

29 5. Social value 32 Theoretical perspectives 32 B Corp: what does the standard require?

38 6. Value for society 42

Theoretical perspectives 42 B Corp: what does the standard require?

45 7. Ecological value 48 Theoretical perspectives 48 B Corp: what does the standard require? ......................................................................................... 50 8. Make an impact together with your customer

Theoretical perspectives 53 B Corp: what does the standard require?

PrimeGlobal member: Eshuis Accountants en Adviseurs 71

PrimeGlobal member: Buzzacott

PrimeGlobal member: Katz Sapper & Miller (KSM) 75

PrimeGlobal member: Jégard Créatis 77

PrimeGlobal member: InCorp Global Pte Ltd 78

PrimeGlobal member: Schneider Downs 80

ACCA member: Profit Impact 81

Saxion School of Finance and International Business / University of Applied Sciences 82

Smyle 84

GadellNet Consulting Services, LLC

....................................................................................................................... 85

Vivera 87

PrimeGlobal Strategic Partner: Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) 88

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................................... 89

Finally, an in-depth book that looks inside the engine of B Corps, the raison d’être, the philosophy of why business must benefit people and regenerate the planet. A word that recurs throughout is ‘value’, one of the central pillars of economic theory since ancient times, which the neo-liberal paradigm we still inhabit has lost sight of. Value is about exchange, citizens, society, mutuality, interdependence, the core of any civilised economy. Value is also central to the measurement systems we use, how we account for the socalled ‘externalities’, the unresolved elephant in the room of economics. Herein the work of accountants is key, witness the pioneering efforts of True Price in The Netherlands in measuring ’total prices’ that include planetary and societal costs above and beyond costs of production, distribution, etc. PUMA was one of the first companies to use true-cost accounting over 10 years ago, when they calculated that their annual profit would effectively halve if external costs were accounted for.

The tapestry of additional threads in measuring and accounting is wide: from adding positive externalities from job creation and maintenance in industries such as bottled water where many families are employed to treating Human Resources as assets on the balance sheet rather than cost in the P & L, from planetary reserves to regenerate diminishing resources to ecosystem accounting, scope 3 and beyond. As others have stated: “Accountants can save the world !”. Such is the power of numbers !

A timely link to the book is the work of ISSB and its chair Emmanuel Faber, who understands that at bottom it’s a new language we need, a language that reveals a new world in tune with nature and people.

It is also a ‘how to’ book, complete with examples of businesses that are using the B Corp Impact Assessment, have certified as B Corps or are on their way.

Every example listed is like a mini case-study with space for notes, comments and questions, making it very hands-on and a true learning tool. Numerous leaders and entrepreneurs are mentioned, which makes it easy to trace these people on LinkedIn and engage in real conversations. In general, B Corp leaders are very communicative and willing to be helpful, which can make the B Corp journey easier and faster.

At a time when many voices are asking for business to step up to the needed transformation towards a more regenerative economy, Mark’s and Aldo’s book is a relatively quick way to become familiar with B Corps, paving the way for the required practice that each will master when completing the B Corp Impact Assessment.

One suggestion is to set up a dedicated web page to collect feedback from the book readers, since an open process of consultation with other users will benefit everyone and speed up the evolution of business !

Finally, from a new language to a new population, a movement of leaders, an ecosystem, where private and public sectors work in tandem to actualize the meaning of the new measuring system that integrates natural, social and human capital. This step towards a multiple theory of capital is a fertile ground for next steps by accountants. The real implication of ecosystem thinking is joint accounting measurement, not for one company on its own, but for companies in an industry, collectively, and eventually even at the levels of local economies, cities and regions. Collective, or shared, well-being can’t really be achieved without shared value creation and shared measurement systems. In this endeavor, the growing population of certified B Corps and Benefit Corporations by law, respectively 6,000 in 85 countries and over 20,000 in 9 countries, is the perfect starting point to experiment with in the years to come.

There is much to do in the next decade to transform economies for well-being. This book makes a concrete contribution in this direction.

Marcello Palazzi Co-Founder, B Lab Europe

Preface by Stephen Heathcote

As temperatures rise the urgency to address climate change increases. Governments around the world have committed to cut greenhouse emissions and will be intensifying their efforts. To achieve net zero goals, businesses of all sizes need to reduce their emissions and will come under increasing pressure to do so. Accounting firms are businesses trusted advisers and must be ready to support their clients PrimeGlobal believes there is a huge opportunity for our member firms globally to embrace sustainability, so they are not only doing the right thing, attracting and keeping employees who want to make a positive impact, but are also significantly growing their firms.

The goal of this book is to inspire our members firms to embrace sustainability within their firms and to give them confidence, learning and the capability to proactively provide the sustainability services their clients, and the world, need.

The B Corp standard provides an excellent framework to both embed sustainability practices within firms and help to support clients The B Corp movement is based on the belief that business can make a positive contribution to people, the environment and society without losing sight of the profit motive. Certified B Corporations are companies verified to meet high standards of social and environmental performance

We are very proud that our Netherland based member firm Eshuis Accountants en Adviseurs is B Corp certified. Mark de Lat, an organisation consultant and partner at Eshuis, co-wrote the original version of this workbook (Better business models, a better world!) with Aldo Van Duivenboden (Education leader, Conscious Business Lab, Saxion International Business School). The book was ground-breaking as the first Dutch B Corp workbook for schools and companies. We are very grateful that Mark and Aldo gave us permission to translate their book into English and add international case studies provided by our PrimeGlobal firms who are leading the way in championing sustainability.

B Corp has expanded around the world with an increasing number of local initiatives – “B locals”. These offer the opportunity for businesses to work with other parties in their local neighbourhood to adopt B Corp principles. We are grateful to the local initiative in the Netherlands BCorpTwente for supporting the development of this original workbook.

As Mark de Lat says, “this book is never finished”. We have included case studies from some of our member firms who are passionate about sustainability – even if they are using alternative approaches and frameworks to B Corp. We see this as a first release, we aim to add many more case studies and examples as our firms, and their clients, increasingly embrace sustainability.

PrimeGlobal’s goal is to be the home for accounting firms who are committed to support sustainable businesses. By sharing practices and providing support we will ensure our member firms are ready to step up when they are needed most. If you are an accounting firm that is ready to embrace our sustainability goals, please contact us so together we can create an unstoppable momentum to build better business models and a better world.

Stephen Heathcote CEO PrimeGlobal sheathcote@primeglobal.net

1. Introduction

How did Mark de Lat and Aldo van Duivenboden end up starting BCorpTwente and what is the approach to the learning-working-doing project? The focus is their ambition: “Better business models, a better world”.

How did this come about?

Mark met Gert Disberg at the end of 2015 and they got talking about social developments and the role of entrepreneurs and administrators. Initially, they talked about the role of government. The idea of a government providing solutions to major social issues, such as energy transition, seems appealing, but the conversation took a turn with the realisation that entrepreneurs should look closer to home.

No sooner said than done. Mark and Gert had various meetings with entrepreneurs. Many discussions followed, thematic meetings were held with entrepreneurs, and a “conscious tour” was organised through the region with the aim of investigating examples of conscious entrepreneurship.

In the quest for (more) conscious business practices, Mark met Charles Vinke for the first time in 2016. At the time, Charles Vinke was director of Asito. Charles told Mark about B Corp: a useful tool to make conscious entrepreneurship measurable and concrete.

In April 2017, Gert Disberg, Peter ter Horst, Hans Oude Avenhuis, Kaj Morel and Mark de Lat founded the Stichting Betekeniseconomie in Twente [Conscious Economy Foundation]. The goal was, and is, to stimulate the transformation and transition to a conscious society in Twente, by:

• Making people aware of what the conscious economy entails and means;

• Exchanging experiences about putting the conscious economy into practice;

• Initiating experiments regarding the conscious economy and facilitating initiatives relating to the conscious economy.

B Corp kept whizzing around Mark's head from the moment he met Charles Vinke and it all fell into place at a meeting with Aldo van Duivenboden of Saxion Conscious Business Lab. At that time Aldo was working on integrating conscious entrepreneurship into the curriculum of the Saxion International Business School. He too was inspired by the B Corp idea of "business as a force for good". During the first meeting, participants were full of energy, and it was decided to start working with students and entrepreneurs on B Corp. On 5 June 2019, a B Corp introductory meeting was organised for Twente entrepreneurs, administrators, teachers and students. Enthusiasm grew. The “birth” of BCorpTwente was accelerated thanks to a financial contribution from the Agenda for Twente.

BCorpTwente

As a result of these meetings, we soon concluded that the it-takes-one-to-know-one effect is of great importance. People, entrepreneurs, want to work together to “do the right thing”. Entrepreneurs like to have a peek behind the scenes of each other’s business, especially if they already know each other from the regional networks. BCorpTwente was designed with this in mind. We build small-scale, local learning groups with a diverse composition allowing everyone to learn from each other. After the support we received from the Agenda for Twente, we started with the first learning group at the beginning of 2020. The first group of participants consisted of representatives from Carel Lurvink, Demcon, De Driesprong Physiotherapy Practice, Gebroeders van der Geest, ReintenInfra, Saxion, Stratek, Switch, Saxion Conscious Business Lab and Eshuis Accountants and Advisers.

A quote from the interview with Kaj Morel and Mark de Lat in the Tubantia newspaper of 27 March 2017

For many entrepreneurs it will sound like airy-fairy idealism. But according to Mark te Lat, co-owner of Eshuis Accountants and Advisers, making money is not a taboo in the Twente Conscious Economy: "Of course not. It just shouldn't be an end in itself. When we advise entrepreneurs at Eshuis, we also pose the question as to how their company can contribute to building a stronger socio-economic region. That results in very different conversations than when it's just about next year's profits. And that long-term thinking, that co-responsibility for your physical environment, leads to better companies in a stronger region. Everyone benefits.”

We now firmly believe that we can create a better world through better business models. And by now, we are convinced that many entrepreneurs want this as well but are walking around wondering how to approach this. The B Corp standard has proven to be a useful tool in answering this “how” question.

Better business models, a better world

We are convinced that SMEs are the driving force behind the shift towards conscious entrepreneurship and the transition to a conscious economy. Here we wholeheartedly endorse Kaj Morel's statement in an interview with VPRO Tegenlicht1: “We wrongly believe that large companies are enormously important. But the vast majority of business is comprised of SMEs. If they can provide an impulse for the conscious economy by uniting in cooperatives and local economies, we can achieve that transformation very quickly.”

We would like this workbook to help SME entrepreneurs answer the “how question” of conscious entrepreneurship. In the experience meanwhile gained with the B CorpTwente standard, we see that this tool gives entrepreneurs a boost to take steps towards conscious entrepreneurship. For inspiration, this book contains interviews with a number of participants in BCorpTwente. These interviews were previously published on www.twente.com and are intended to share the experiences gained with fellow entrepreneurs. The participants in the interviews are happy to share their experiences with you personally, so please feel free to contact them.

We hope that this book will contribute to strengthening the collaboration between education, research and business. For this reason, three Saxion professors share their vision of conscious entrepreneurship and demonstrate how they can use their research assignments to help entrepreneurs in the region find practical answers to complex issues. B Corp is an organisation of US origin. The impact assessment is an open-source instrument that is freely accessible to anyone. With this book we hope to make B Corp certification more accessible to entrepreneurs. 1

Source: Morel, VPRO Tegenlicht, The Conscious Economy, 2020

2. Why B Corp?

"B Corporation certification for companies can be compared to FairTrade for coffee or LEED for buildings," said Joey van den Brink, Certification Manager associated with B Lab Europe / BeNeLux in one of his presentations. He also argued that in the last 20 years we have mainly focused on the quality of products and services with certificates such as the FSC label and ISO.

B Corp takes an integrated, holistic view of “good companies” and assesses the total impact of a company on people, the environment and society. As a result of various (global) social developments, there is a growing need to measure the performance of companies with respect to sustainability. Customers want to know what they are getting and vendors want to make their contributions visible.

This chapter discusses the transition from the money-driven economy to the conscious economy and explains the structure of the B Corp framework.

Global social developments

The corona crisis has contributed to the awareness that transitions are necessary on many fronts. We are increasingly realising that the earth is better off without us, but we cannot do without it. The finiteness of fossil fuels and other raw materials is recognised, and we see that the lack of biodiversity leads to major problems. We cannot solve the issues of our time with the familiar old approaches.

Veltenaar and Zevenbergen (Zevenbergen & Veltenaar, 2020) summarise these developments in seven megashifts. Megashifts that we will briefly explain below - from our vision and freely interpreted based on Veltenaar and Zevenbergen - and provide each with a question. Questions that require an answer from you, the reader. We challenge you to write down the answers to these questions and let them sink in. That is why this book provides you with several spaces to make notes!

Nature

We see nature crumbling. Whether it is the unbridled felling of rainforests in the Amazon or the mowing of verges in the Netherlands. In both cases, the impact on biodiversity is unsustainable. In addition, the supply of natural raw materials such as oil and gas and various metals such as lead, zinc and copper are dwindling. This can be attributed to our consumption patterns.

How circular is your work and life?

Consumption

In particular in the Western world, daily consumption and the resulting waste we produce has grown to monstrous proportions. For example, according to the World Food program one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally and the production of textiles appears to be more polluting than the chemical industry.

What does your consumption pattern look like?

Money and property

Many of these unsustainable trends are linked to the way we perceive money and property, and the way we deal with prosperity and well-being. Instead of prosperity serving our well-being, over time it has become the other way around. It is not a coincidence then that even the Financial Times made the following appeal: “Capitalism. Time for a reset” .

How do you view prosperity and well-being?

Work and labour

Finland is committed to a four-day work week, with a six-hour working day. For the record: in 1960, the Central Commission for Civil Service Consultation [Centrale Commissie voor Overleg in Ambtenarenzaken] decided to introduce the five-day working week in the Netherlands and were given Saturdays off. As a result of robotisation and digitalisation, professions are disappearing, and it is time to reconsider how we view work and labour.

In the publication “The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?” (2013), Frey and Osborne list the following top 10 professions that will disappear as a result of robotisation:

1. Tax consultant (99%) 2. Telemarketer (99%) 3. Delivery van driver (98%) 4. Estate agent (97%) 5. Bridge master (97%) 6. Secretary (96%) 7. Gardener (95%) 8. Warehouse employee (95%) 9. Accountant (94%) 10. Butcher (93%)

Which jobs will disappear in your organisation and when?

Technology

In addition to the impact of technology on labour described above, we are seeing a range of issues arising from this trend. Whether it is the role of Facebook, dependence on Wi-Fi or carbon capture, technology is having both a positive and negative impact on our lives.

How are you impacted by technology?

Governance

Transparency is a familiar concept in this context. Organisations are becoming more transparent by the day without intending to. Consider for instance Follow The Money, the collective of journalists that closely follows and names developments in the financial world. Underlying this is the fact that organisations are increasingly expected to take responsibility for their actions and be transparent about it.

What do you take responsibility for and how do you account for it?

Leadership

In essence, as far as we are concerned, the various megashifts come together in the last one, which is leadership. It is about management of organisations assuming responsibility for the impact they have on people and society. In essence, this requires personal leadership and the courage of the individuals involved to make a difference.

What example do you want to set through your actions?

Working towards a conscious economy!

If we look at these developments from an economic perspective, we have arrived - as Kees Klomp, Stefan Wobben and Jesse Kleijer set out in their “Handboek Betekenisvol ondernemen” (Klomp, Wobben, & Jesse, 2016) [Manual on conscious entrepreneurship]- in the conscious economy.

The agrarian economy can be considered the first economy in our history. In this economy, land ownership is the most important condition for economic success. The agrarian economy is succeeded by the industrial economy, in which the invention of the steam engine is the starting point and allows for mass production. Now machines become the most important asset. In recent decades, the industrial revolution has evolved into the so-called knowledge economy, as a result of the introduction of the computer. In the knowledge economy, knowledge has become the most important condition for economic success.

Currently, we have entered the transition to the conscious economy, the fourth economic paradigm. In the conscious economy we realise that the primary purpose of the economy is not to make money. The goal of the conscious economy is to maximise the positive impact of our activities on the entire ecosystem. From this positive contribution, we derive meaning as people and as an organisation. We are increasingly becoming aware that companies do not exist to - as Kees Klomp puts it - serve a niche in the market, but that we have to look for the "niche in society" we want to fill.

Kaj Morel presents 10 principles for conscious entrepreneurship:

1. We focus on the community-centred person (instead of the self-centred person).

2. Community is the highest good (instead of individual freedom).

3. Again, ethics are, as a matter of course, an integral part of our economic thinking and actions.

4. Prosperity for everyone is not created by the invisible hand of the market but by us.

5. Consciousness maximisation is the driving force of our economy (rather than profit maximisation).

6. Economics is about serving interests (rather than fulfilling needs).

7. Economics is about the long term (rather than the short term).

8. Economics is about conscious growth (rather than growth for growth's sake).

9. Only the creation of thick value is good from an economic perspective (rather than thin value).

10. The fair price is the most important (instead of the market price)

How?

When the Betekeniseconomie in Twente foundation back in 2015 came together with fellow entrepreneurs, conscious entrepreneurship was reserved for a limited number of trendsetters. Frontrunners in the form of “start-ups” and entrepreneurs who wanted to do things differently based on the realisation that “it can't go on like this” or “as an entrepreneur, I no longer want to do it this way”. In recent years, more and more entrepreneurs recognise that they want to do things differently and more than ever the question arises "how do I go about it?". This pattern is not new. We know it from the time of the emerging quality assurance. The

trendsetters had already set to work passionately and were visiting Japan to learn from the masters there. Quality assurance was widely launched by tools such as ISO certification and the EFQM standard. These assessment tools were the key to answering the "how?" question in the business model and to measuring and securing results.

Inspired by the book "Changing the Food Game" (Simons, 2015), the following phases in the emergence of conscious entrepreneurship can be distinguished in line with the previous paragraph:

1. Early starters: There are pioneers who start new innovations and pilot projects;

2. First movement: The first followers get moving. Numerous competing certificates are appearing on the market. Consider the CO2 performance ladder and the code for social entrepreneurship; methods that have the same purpose but look at it from different perspectives;

3. Critical mass: The new idea reaches the general public. A number of market leaders agree to adopt the same method of working. B Corp has been positioned by a number of market leaders as an unambiguous method;

4. Institutionalise: There is embedding in laws and regulations.

In the context of conscious entrepreneurship, the open-source B Corp standard helps to answer this “how” question. At its core, it is about creating better business models for a better world.

B Corp in a nutshell

B Corp is a quality label for entrepreneurs who, in addition to generating profits for shareholders, take the impact of their actions on people, the environment and society as the starting point for their actions. To become B Corp certified, companies must actually demonstrate that they are using their business as a force for good. As of August 2022, more than 5,627 companies in 85 countries and 158 industries worldwide have been certified as Benefit Corporations. The open-source B Corp assessment is used as a measurement method by over 30,000 organisations worldwide. For example, Tony Chocolonely, Dopper, Greyston Bakery, Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia, Moyee Coffee, Snappcar, Auping, Nespresso, Body Shop and the Triodos Bank are certified B Corp companies.

The B Corp quality label can be used as a tool (even where certification is not applicable) towards doing business in a more conscious way one step at a time. B Corp offers a practical framework for identifying improvement potential with respect to the following five themes. For each theme, there is a number of basic questions.

1. Mission, vision and governance of the organisation

• Does the organisation have a detailed mission statement that expresses its commitment to social, ecological and community-based entrepreneurship?

• Is the organisation transparent with respect to its performance in terms of conscious business? (An annual report and/or impact report is a relevant tool in this respect).

2. Employees

• Does the organisation actively ensure the personal development of its employees?

• Does the organisation measure and systematically improve employee satisfaction?

3. Society

• How does the organisation contribute to society? (For example, by doing volunteer work and/or donating to social objectives)?

• In what way does the organisation actively contribute to themes such as diversity and inclusion and (local) socio-economic development?

4. Ecological

• Does the organisation self-evaluate and evaluate its suppliers with respect to social, environmental and community impact?

• How does the organisation reduce its energy, materials and water consumption, as well as its CO2 emissions?

5. Customers

• How does the organisation create conscious impact for its customers through its products and services by working from an impact business model?

• How does the organisation safeguard the rights of its customers by, for example, providing guarantees and carefully managing (customer) data?

B Corp offers an extensive digital self-assessment (https://app.bimpactassessment.net/login) every organisation can use to determine how it scores in relation to the standard. The digital environment also offers practical tools for gradual improvement. Chapter 3 discusses the basic principles of the B Corp standard. In chapters 4 to 8, the five B Corp themes are discussed in more detail by offering inspiration and interpretation from a theoretical perspective, followed by illustrating how the theme is viewed within the B Corp standard.

3. The B Corp standard

B Corp is a quality label for entrepreneurs who take people, the environment and society as their starting point, in addition to profit and shareholders. B Corp companies demonstrate that it is possible to gradually transform an existing business model into one in which an organisation assumes its responsibility and achieves a positive impact for all its stakeholders - for the management, employees and customers, but also for the environment and society.

Impact

Five key questions

The B Corp standard focuses on five key questions:

1. To what extent is the organisation able to realise its mission?

2. What is the social impact of the organisation on its employees?

3. What impact does the organisation have on the communities it is part of?

4. What is the ecological impact of the organisation, its (production) facilities, products and services?

5. What impact can an organisation realise in the chain from suppliers to customers?

Using the impact assessment, the organisation give itself a score, which it can compare with other companies from the same or similar sector. This creates a benchmark for companies that want to be a force for good.

Joey van den Brink, Head of Certification Manager at B Lab Europe, recommends using the impact profile shown below for a first “squint analysis”. This tool allows you to determine where you are already making an impact and where you would like to increase your impact. To do this, place an X on the axes for the current situation and a * for the desired situation. In the centre of the model, the score is a 0 (work remains to be done) and on the edge of the circle, you score a 5, indicating that you have this element perfectly in order. Don't think about it for too long and let it be a first “squint analysis”. While reading this workbook, you can go deeper and define specific improvement actions more concretely.

Business model

Mission, vision and governance Employees Society Environment Customers

To what e tent is the or anisa on ab e to rea ise its ission?

What is the socia i pact of the or anisa on on its e p oyees?

What i pact does the or anisa on ha e on the co uni es it is part of?

What is the eco o ica i pact of the or anisa on its produc on faci i es products and ser ices?

What i pact can an or anisa on rea ise in the chain fro supp iers to custo ers?

"No matter how quick the intention, reality will catch up". In many organisations, there is no lack of policy intentions, and board members express themselves in terms such as: "We want the best for society and for our employees". However, the question remains to what extent these intentions also become a measurable reality and "old behaviour" is permanently adjusted. The B Corp assessment has evolved into what it is today based on the experiences of thousands of audits carried out worldwide. B Corp has its own way of looking at a company and its business activities. Below, we share our experiences with the B Corp approach and the underlying line of thought in the hope that it will help you determine how best to use the B Corp impact assessment.

Characteristic principles

A number of defining principles emerge from our experience with B Corp and conversations with the organisations working with the B Corp standard.

Use and build on the good elements already present

One principle is that B Corp starts from “the good already present”. It is this starting point of “what already exists” that should encourage you to take the first steps. Thus, start by identifying where your organisation already creates multiple value. Next, the challenge is to build on this existing basis. This is reflected in how points are awarded in the (self-)assessment. With every step forward, from small to large, you score points. The maximum score is 200 points and the minimum score required to apply for certification by B Lab is 80 points.

This is not a step to be taken lightly. It requires focus, creativity and intrinsic motivation to achieve those 80 points, we are told by various organisations that have already been certified. During the audit, you must also be able to actually demonstrate the points. The scale runs to 200 points, so there always remains sufficient potential for development of your impact business model. In addition, B Lab continues to develop the standard, effectively making the lower limit of 80 points a dynamic one.

Positive psychology and appreciative enquiry

In line with the principle above, the B Corp standard is based on principles of positive psychology and appreciative enquiry. Literally: what are you already doing? And: how can you do it even better? The standard invites you to look in a positive way at what your business (model) can contribute to a better world. All steps, big and small, count. Even the texts in the self-assessment have an appreciative character and motivate you to take steps forward.

Impact business models

B Corp distinguishes two ways in which you can make an impact as an organisation. You can create operational impact by gradually increasing your positive impact in your traditional business model. The focus is on daily improvement of the social, societal and ecological impact of the organisation on all stakeholders. This includes reducing energy consumption, waste reduction, sustainable procurement policies, the way employees are treated and the way the organisation is managed.

The other way to make an impact as an organisation is to work from an impact business model explicitly set up to realise a social, societal or ecological goal. A great example is the “Open Hiring system” of the Greyston Bakery in New York: “We don't hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people”. An impact business model can be based on a product or service, a unique process, the customer or a special business structure. An example of an impact business model is Sheltersuit (operating in the Netherlands, South Africa and the US).

Sheltersuit: People helping people

Our mission

We developed the Sheltersuit as a short-term solution to a major problem. It won't solve the homeless and refugee problem, but it will prevent people from freezing to death on the streets. We believe that every human life counts and therefore everyone has the right to this small shelter if they need it.

Based on this mission, more than 10,000 homeless people have now been provided with a shelter suit, 21,000 kg of residual materials have been used and 112 jobs have been created.

Source: https://sheltersuit.com

B Corp is therefore a useful tool for existing, traditional businesses that intend to gradually make the transition to an impact business model, as well as for organisations that are conscious right from day one.

Thinking in terms of multiple value

The B Corp standard reasons on the basis of creating multiple value: social, economic, ecological and environmental value. This makes it a holistic, integral standard connecting the different value concepts. In doing so, B Corp adopts a broader view than standards such as ISO and the CO2 performance ladder, which focus on individual aspects of sustainability.

I made a lot of money!

Fortunately, few people consider it important to have it pointed out at their funeral that they made a lot of money. One banker - retired but certainly not resting in peace - even stated on a social media site: “everything is about money, always and everywhere”. If that were true, he most certainly must be a poor man!

Fortunately, our behaviour is guided by more than just money. Yet some people think that economics and business are about “making money”. Anyone who has paid attention in economics class knows that the essence of economics is: “creating value”. And value is by definition multidimensional (the financial dimension being one of them); therefore “multiple value creation” is a pleonasm. To me, this is an abomination, but then again, if you talk about multiple value creation, everyone apparently knows that you mean more than just money.

What we at Saxion University of Applied Sciences try to teach students is to think about how they can add value. And yes, of course, also about how to make money in the process. We have them think about what purpose they would like to have in society, what their “moonshot” is, what their purpose is, what their social contribution will be, what they want to be said at their funeral service. And from that position they learn to think about how they organise this added value in a business and how they are paid for these activities.

A few examples:

• student, potential successor in a family business in interior decoration, has developed a new business concept on circular building; this will reduce the use of raw materials;

• student, formerly struggling with a negative self-image with all its physical and psychological consequences, has developed a business concept that aims to prevent young people from going under, ending up in a downward spiral, opting for the short-term temptations of crime, but instead ending up on a path towards becoming responsible citizens;

• student who has developed a business concept to reduce food waste in the catering industry;

• student, potential successor in a family business, sees all kinds of residual streams in their textile company; at the moment, processing these residual streams incurs costs, but this student has developed a business concept that will allow them to add value to these streams.

Absolutely, they want to develop a business they can earn money with, but their primary motivation is the opportunity to offer added value. Their business enables them to contribute to reducing social problems. Making money then becomes a means of achieving a higher goal and building a future-proof business.

Dr. Erik Wierstra, Professor of Applied Science in Entrepreneurship

Think and observe like an assessor

When you start working with the B Corp standard, think and observe like an assessor. Look at Intention, Existence and Effect, to which we like to add the words “Experience and Motion”:

• To ensure that you don't just say you want something (Intention);

• Putting the policy on paper (Existence);

• It is also about putting the policy into practice (Effect);

• Such that employees and customers actually experience the intended policy (Experience and Motion).

Developing on-the-job

Working with the B Impact assessment shares many similarities with the way computer games work. You can see the result of the policy implemented and the resulting actions on the scoreboard in real time and online. This motivates you to develop in a work-based manner and - as we noticed in the various organisations - to regularly review your progress together with colleagues from the B Corp project team and consider the next step. The B Corp standard challenges you to develop in a work-based manner, which is also the aim of this workbook.

By now you have come across various pages for taking notes and answering the various questions that have been presented. It is time to dig deeper into the five themes of the B Corp standard. But before we do, first a few points for reflection.

Is it all praise then?

Reading the above, you may wonder: is there no criticism of the B Corp standard at all? Yes, there is. Below we discuss the practical and fundamental criticisms we have encountered.

An administrative burden

To comply with the B Corp standard, written evidence and substantiation with facts and figures is required. For organisations that are not used to recording policies, the B Corp standard feels like an administrative burden.

Achieving 80 points is tough

Many organisations energetically embark on the self-analysis and quickly collect the first points. Subsequently, a large number of organisations get stuck between the 60-70 points mark. From that point on, it takes perseverance, creativity and a genuine wish for a conscious business to achieve the 80 points required to apply for the assessment. B Corp certification is a strategic choice and requires perseverance.

Not another certificate

“Not another certificate", we sometimes hear. And: "Is it all about having certificates on the wall now?", is one of the reactions we received. Yes, B Corp is distinctive and if you want to you can apply for the certificate. Organisations that want to be certified use B Corp as proof that they are consciously working on realising multiple value. They experience certification as a positive big stick, an aid to keep working on their ambitions as conscious entrepreneurs. And if you are only interested in the certificate or have ambitions to be a green washer, our advice is: don't do it.

B Corp is a form of enlightened business and does not look to consider the underlying system There are certainly fundamental criticisms too, as expressed by Anand Giridharadas in his book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” (Giridharadas, 2019), in which he states the following: “A new kind of certification has emerged from socially minded B Corporations that reflect the belief that a more enlightened business interest - rather than, say, regulation and legislation - is the surest guarantee of the common good".

Fundamentally, Anand's criticism is that systems such as B Corp emphasise - as he puts it - hopeful solutions rather than actual systemic change.

Inter iew: Konink ijke Van Wijhe Verf Paint Manufacturer Nether ands.

BCorpTwente meets Koninklijke Van Wijhe Verf The ideal combination of innovation and sustainability

BCorpTwente is a group of ten entrepreneurs in the Twente region of the Netherlands, who set to work using the B Corp standard. A standard that helps organisations make sense of the value they create. To learn from other organisations working with B Corp, Bas van der Geest of Gebr Van der Geest and Mark de Lat of Eshuis Accountants and Advisers apprenticed with Royal Van Wijhe Verf. Marlies van Wijhe and Edwin van Broekhuizen, respectively General Manager and Sales Director Decorative Paints of Van Wijhe Verf started B Corp in 2015 and have been certified since 2016.

When Marlies informed her Management Team (MT) in 2015 about the ambition to become B Corp, their initial reaction was: “What do we need it for?" Now, some five years later, they don't want to be without. "As time went by, we found that this tool helps us make our sustainable ambitions visible and concrete, as becoming a B Corp was not easy", says Edwin, laughing.

The ideal combination of innovation and sustainability

The moment Marlies was awarded Business Woman of the Year 2010 is still vivid in her mind. "For me, this was the moment of being in the spotlight when you are expected to tell your story. My drive was to find a combination of innovation and sustainability. This accelerated both my own and our company's sustainability ambitions. When I subsequently took on a role in the Board of the Nudge Foundation, my ambitions were further honed. Especially given my background as a paint manufacturer.”

“A few years later, Jan van Betten, the founder of Nudge, called me. Jan advised me to become B Corp certified", Marlies continues, explaining the reason behind Van Wijhe's certification. “Since we were already very active in the field of sustainability, Jan thought it would be easy to achieve this. We soon found out that becoming a B Corp organisation requires intrinsic motivation. Not surprisingly, I almost gave up twice. Thanks to the support of B Corp International and a consultancy firm we managed to cross the finish line".

B Corp requires clear reasoning

Going from doing the right thing to qualifying for certification is a quantum leap for many organisations, Marlies and Edwin agree. “You start full of enthusiasm by stating what you are already doing. We then concluded that we already do a great deal, but that not all of this is documented. In the next phase, you allow yourself to be inspired by the B Corp standard. We noticed that it was “collecting” the 80 points required for certification that motivated us. Each time, we had to take a good look at how we could improve ourselves by what reasoning and actions. That critical look has brought us a lot", Marlies and Edwin tell us. “Moreover, B Corp is a good listener, as long as you can back up your reasoning," Marlies observes matter-of-factly.

Gather enthusiasts

Marlies and Edwin recognise that having sustainability in your DNA is not enough to get ahead. It must be recorded properly as well. “You can view this as documentary burden of proof. We prefer to see it as a way of thinking properly about our ambitions", says Edwin. “And where at the start it was Marlies' intrinsic motivation, we are now working on it throughout the organisation. We noticed this recently when we were working towards recertification with a team of enthusiasts from different departments within our company, ranging

from P&O to distribution and production.” "And indeed, this time the entire MT was involved", Marlies adds. "We now use B Corp as our sustainability management system. Because B Corp's question sets change constantly, it raises the bar higher and higher and encourages us to improve all the time”.

B Corp and Sustainable Development Goals

When asked how Marlies and Edwin view the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to B Corp, Marlies explains: "As a MT we started by choosing a number of SDGs to provide the basis for our practice. Now we focus on our practice and look at where our business operations converge with the SDGs. For example, if we organise a “sowing day” because we want to pay attention to biodiversity, we link it to the corresponding SDG. In doing so, we draw attention to sustainability on the basis of our business model and what we consider important. We adopt the same approach for our customers and suppliers. Now that we have a broader scope, we notice that there is an overlap with many more SDGs.

Forging a collective together!

Bas notes that, to date, few companies in the decorative paints sector are B Corp certified. He sees it as a challenge, together with Van Wijhe Verf, to motivate colleagues to move away from the adage “We're from toilet duck and we sell toilet duck.” "We see a lot of green washing", says Edwin. "So, it really needs to go beyond marketing because, from the B Corp standard, nice stories just don’t cut it. It would be nice to forge a collective in our sector", Bas and Edwin conclude together.

This interview was adapted from the Dutch version published on LinkedIn on 29 October 2020

4. Mission ision and o ernance

The first building block of the B Corp standard can be typified by the following questions:

• Does the organisation have a detailed mission statement that expresses its commitment to social, ecological and community-based entrepreneurship?

• Does the organisation publish an annual report in which it accounts for its performance in terms of conscious entrepreneurship?

Before we address these questions from the B Corp standard, we will first consider a number of theoretical perspectives. Lord Thomas Dewar put it as follows:

“Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open”

Theoretical perspectives

To many, the financial-economic perspective has been the dominant point of departure for managing organisations. The development of the agricultural economy to the conscious economy as described above is based on the fact that purely focusing on money without taking into account the impact on nature and society is finite. Therefore, conscious entrepreneurship means that companies must make the step from traditional result-oriented to impact-oriented management.

Mission and vision: give priority to creating multiple value

The key question in impact management is: how do you, as an organisation, really want to make a difference? The trick is to formulate a mission and vision that incorporates these multiple values. A mission that challenges you to realise multiple values: societal, ecological, social and economic.

The mission and vision of my organisation reads as follows:

Looking at the current mission and vision, where do you see multiple value being created?

This method of management and accountability requires insight into the chain of activities that ultimately facilitates impact management.

Before looking at the way you manage and account for your organisation, you would do well to assess whether you have the ingredients in house that are relevant to making a mission and vision a reality. How have you developed the following ingredients for your organisation?

1. Mission: what is your organisation’s raison d'être?

2. Vision: what kind of organisation do you want to be?

3. Values: what values do you believe in?

4. Strategy: what goals have you set for yourself?

5. Strategy realisation: what arguments underlie your strategy?

6. Success indicators: what do you focus on?

Based on our experiences with strategy projects, it is striking that the part of strategy realisation is quickly forgotten. As a result, for many employees strategy remains an abstract far removed from their own lives. It is not a luxury, therefore, to reflect on the reasoning behind the strategy and to tell the story.

Make

strategy realisation a priority!

The B Corp standard pays extensive attention to the mission, values and vision, as you will see in the section “B Corp: what does the standard require?” In this chapter, we pay extra attention to ingredients 4, and 6, i.e., the way in which the mission, values and vision become reality through an effective process of strategy realisation. We build on the strategy map developed by Kaplan and Norton and add the perspective of impact.

With respect to the 5 perspectives on the strategy map, we pose a number of key questions. Key questions designed to understand the way in which you intend to create value with your organisation and to spell out the underlying reasoning.

Perspective of learning and growth

• How do you relate to your employees in your organisation?

• How do you collect and manage information and organisational capital?

• How do you work together within your company and with your strategic partners?

• How do you characterise your culture and is it in line with the desired future?

Process perspective

• What does the work process look like at the level of activity?

• What are the key main and supporting processes in your company?

• Are these activities “social” towards your employees and customers?

• Can you (re)design processes in such a way that they have a limited/no ecological impact?

Customer perspective

• What is your value proposition when dealing with your customers?

• What does the distribution channel you use to serve your customers look like?

• How have you segmented the market?

• How do you make customers aware of the impact you make and the contribution you expect from them?

Results perspective

• What results does your organisation achieve in terms of market share, turnover and returns?

• What results are accounted for both within and outside the organisation?

Impact perspective

• What impact does your organisation have from a community, social, ecological and economic perspective?

• Do you make an impact when you have money to spare or is impact integrated into daily operations?

By answering the preceding questions, you bring into focus how your organisation ultimately realises multiple value. The design of your business model determines the extent to which you are able to realise your goals in all areas.

Better business models for a better world!

Looking at impact and creating multiple value in this way requires a different starting point for your thought process. How do you realise your mission and vision and how do you incorporate this into your business model? Based on the classic approach of “finding a niche in the market”, one often looks at the developments in the market to subsequently determine how to respond to this new market with the business model.

The DESTEP tool is a frequently used tool for finding niches in the market. The letters DESTEP represent six macro-factors: Demographic, Economic, Socio-Cultural, Technological, Ecological and Political-Legal. Looking at business models through B Corp glasses requires a different perspective. From the B Corp perspective, you are looking for niches in society that you subsequently focus on in your business model.

We use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as a source of inspiration. These are seventeen goals through which the UN intends to make the world a better place: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

So - based on these Sustainable Development Goals - you can ask yourself a number of questions:

• How can I use my business model to contribute directly to one of these development goals?

Tony Chocolonely has explicitly linked its business model to the Sustainable Development Goals by working towards slave-free production of chocolate, thus contributing to SDG 1, for example;

• How can I support these development goals through the activities I undertake? A company decides to motivate its employees to take up sports. This contributes to SDG 3;

• The next challenge is to apply this to the organisation's business model. How to do this is described in chapter 8: “Make impact together with your customer”.

B Corp: what does the standard require?

The first chapter of the B Corp standard, Mission, Vision and Governance, expects a further specification and description of the organisation's mission, vision and core values and how to account for them in a transparent manner.

Make sure you have a written mission statement

As with every section in the B Corp assessment, it is assumed that the mission statement has been put in writing. An important point here is that the mission statement shows that the organisation sets goals in terms of its social, societal and environmental impact.

Define the mission in the company's articles of association

To clearly show that the organisation is actually committed to this impactful mission, it must be laid down in the company's articles of association by means of a notarial deed. In the case of a Dutch Private Limited Company, these are passages such as:

• Amendment to the Company's Objective: "One of the objectives of the Company is to have a significantly positive impact on society and the environment in general through its business operations and activities.”

• Amendment to the Chapter on the Directors of the Company: “In making their decisions, the directors shall also consider the social, economic, legal or other consequences of the conduct of the Company's business operations with respect to (i) employees, subsidiaries and suppliers (ii) the interests of the customers of the Company and its subsidiaries, (iii) the communities and society in which the Company, its subsidiaries and suppliers conduct their business, (iv) the local and global environment and (v) the short and long-term interests of the Company.”

Source: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/about-b-corps/legal-requirements

Incidentally, in many cases we see that (B Corp) companies focus their mission on one specific impact. The B Corp amendment of the articles of association enables those companies to put that mission into practice and safeguard it by laying it down in the articles of association. By making it explicit in the articles of association that multiple value creation is the goal and including it in the decision-making process of the directors, making an impact is literally and figuratively embedded. For accounting firms, the mission should be clearly articulated as a goal by the firm’s partners

Translate the mission into everyday practice

Recording the mission is not enough. It is important to apply it to everyday practice, for example by:

• Setting up the decision-making process in such a way that the ecological, social and societal impact of the decision is considered as part of the decision-making process;

• Explicitly assessing the risks from a social, societal and ecological perspective;

• Not merely describing these risks on paper, but also discussing them and making them visible in the interaction with key stakeholders such as employees, customers and suppliers/partners;

• Link the evaluation and remuneration of both management and employees to the company's social, societal and environmental performance.

Link ethical conduct to the organisation's core values

B Corp considers it important for a company to have a code of conduct. A code of conduct that clear defines the behaviour that is expected from employees with respect to issues such as fraud and corruption. It is recommended to link this code of conduct to the company's core values. This prevents the document itself, the code of conduct, from becoming the focus and brings the desired behaviour of employees in line with the mission and vision of the organisation.

Be transparent by being actively accountable

B Corp assumes that the organisation has an annual report that is audited by an independent party. The annual report is a great way to be accountable. Accountability that goes beyond finances, you will not be surprised to hear. The annual report, or rather “impact report”, is not only an important tool for communication and accountability towards external stakeholders but certainly also towards employees. A good example of an CSR report comes from our member firm Buzzacott. This report can be viewed at: https://www.buzzacott.co.uk/news/corporate-responsibility-and-sustainability-report-2020-21

5. Socia a ue

The second building block of the B Corp standard asks you the following questions:

• Does your organisation actively ensure the personal development of its employees?

• Does your organisation measure employee satisfaction and do you systematically improve it?

Based on the theoretical perspectives as provided by research firm Gallup and the “Bathtub metaphor” published by Mark de Lat in 2008, we concretise the theme of social value. This is in line with the statement of Grandma De Lat. In respect of this perspective, she is claimed to have said:

Theoretical perspectives

The insights provided by the Gallup research firm are used to make the connection between the social and economic value of a company. Based on the research of lecturer Stephan Corporaal and the principles of “bathtub management”, we then look at how an organisation realises social value.

Realising economic value through social value

In the publication "The Next Discipline: Applying Behavioral Economics to Drive Growth and Profitability” (Gallup), US research and consulting firm Gallup demonstrates the connection between creating social and economic value of a company. The research described in the previous article is based on behavioural economics. The principles of behavioural economics are shown in the figure below and concern an adaptation of the so-called “The Gallup Path”.

"A human being is not an old pram you can just dump in a ditch"

In essence, it boils down to the fact that by putting the employee first, you put the customer first. With that, behavioural economics subscribes to the pyramid of organisational awareness described in chapter 6. To measure employee engagement, Gallup has developed an applied question set for employees, the so-called Gallup 12:

1. I know what is expected of me at work

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right

3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day

4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work

5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person

6. At work, my opinions seem to count

7. There is someone at work who encourages my development

8. The mission or purpose of my organisation makes me feel my job is important

9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work

10. I have a best friend at work

11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress

12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

Social value

How do you get and keep your employees moving and developing? That's the key question at the heart of increasing social value. On the one hand, it’s so that employees are able to contribute to the organisation's strategic goals. On the other hand, it’s so that employees can continue to make a valuable contribution to your organisation and the rapidly changing labour market. Getting employees to act is therefore in the interest of both the organisation and the employee.

Your employees in learning mode

There are various “buttons” you can push to get your employees in a learning mode and to encourage them to be more proactive and less wait-and-see. These insights are crucial: employees are the most important factor to successfully initiate desired changes, but - as the figures below show - employees feel that they are not always given the opportunity to be mobile.

Facts & Figures: employees are not mobile by definition

• 82% of employees feel they do not need new skills to do their job properly;

• 52% of the employees experience too little autonomy in their work. As a result, they are less able to solve problems, to work productively and, what's more, they remain with the same employer less often;

• Research shows that these are important for boosting employees' mobility, but they are severely prevented from doing so because of pressure related to performance and efficiency.

Dr. Stephan Corporaal, Professor of Applied Science in Human Resources

Based on the research of Stephan Corporaal and his colleagues, there are several key factors for increasing the social value in an organisation. Below, we will discuss these factors one by one, as they have been provided by Stephan for the purpose of this book.

Do you offer jobs that challenge people to be mobile and develop?

Employees learn and develop as part of their work, which is certain, and it happens naturally. In particular, when new technology is introduced into the company, every employer makes sure that employees learn how to use it. Often, this is done during work, among colleagues, or by having an employee follow a course at the supplier. These forms of learning are important, but very reactive. They are also ad hoc, random and often oneoff in nature.

Need for continuous development

To achieve significantly better performance and to realise innovations, continuous development of employees in the company is essential. To do this, learning in the company must be more thought-out, structural and tailored to the target group, and often even to the individual employee. This will lead to much better, repeatable and reasonably predictable results. There is much to gain for entrepreneurs if they approach training and development of employees in a well-considered and systematic way. This does not only relate to the question of what needs to be learnt, but also of how to best learn this on the shop floor.

Development and mobility as an integrated part of work

There are currently many barriers that prevent employees from undertaking formal training. People work hard, have a family life and often care responsibilities as well. And in their free time, there should be room for things other than work and courses. Many people weren’t too excited about school and were happy to leave that period behind. That's why we do not consider formal education or training all that important, but rather look at how you can make development part of the culture and daily work of the organisation. The result is that learning and workflow naturally into one another and employees practically learn “without realising it”, but nevertheless in a sensible and systematic way.

This approach suits SME companies that are relatively small, where production is paramount and there are usually no large training budgets. Work-based learning provides a solution in this situation. Moreover, in many smaller companies the owner tends to know his people well. He personally knows the people (what they can do and what they are good at, but also what does not work well) and he is usually also familiar with their home situations. So, he also knows for whom the extra burden of an education is not a good idea. Insight into the personal situation and needs of your employees is a prerequisite for adequate development at work. Match the possibilities and wishes of your employees. Every person is different. One person likes variety and challenge, another needs something different. Try to find out what motivates that employee who is less willing. Who knows, this employee might surprise you if you were to better meet his individual needs and qualities. Research shows that investing in employee training and development contributes to job satisfaction and also pays off economically.

Promoting mobility

Research by Alan Coetzer and colleagues (2017, Distinctive Characteristics of Small Businesses as Sites for Informal Learning) shows that there are six characteristics to promote employee mobility and development:

1. Job content: jobs that keep challenging to further develop;

2. Collaboration and team development;

3. Leadership focused on learning;

4. Space and security to develop;

5. Organisational characteristics that promote learning and development;

6. Work that connects with the outside world.

The following checklist shows the “dials” you can turn that are effective in promoting employee mobility.

Area of interest Check questions

Job content

We make sure our employees' jobs remain varied and challenging.

We offer meaningful work with a clear outcome.

We offer freedom of work and of choice.

We offer a job that gives direct and clear information about the effectiveness of job performance.

We offer time and opportunity for (reflection on) learning.

We offer challenging tasks that call for different knowledge and skills.

Promoting collaboration and team development

We offer a working relationship characterised by mutual trust, respect, openness and accessibility.

We have mentors and role models.

We offer diverse and changing team compositions.

Leadership focused on learning Our managers set challenging goals.

Our managers actively provide feedback.

Our managers provide support when problems arise.

Our managers encourage development as part of the daily work.

Our managers create a shared vision.

Our managers ensure that knowledge is shared.

Space and security for development We encourage experimentation and risk-taking.

Does your company have leaders who inspire mobility and development?

The manager is crucial in realising employee mobility. A survey of managers in SMEs shows a clear theme among companies that are successful in developing their employees. These companies actively and continuously optimise, improve and develop their processes, products and services. They also translate this into regular adjustments to the day-to-day work. In doing so, employees are challenged - often with a prominent role for their immediate supervisor - to continuously develop. Four conditions are important in this respect:

1. For employees, the need for development is clear due to regular adjustments to their day-to-day work. For example, because they are regularly involved in new customer requests/product changes or through direct contact with customers and suppliers.

2. Managers balance cleverly between (production) targets and responding to the development needs of individuals or teams. They do not overwhelm employees with changes but challenge them step-by-step to contribute ideas and encourage them to continuously develop within their work and their team.

3. Companies offer jobs that (continue to) challenge people to develop in the long term as well.

4. Knowledge exchange, security and rewarding initiative to develop are part of the company culture.

It is clear from the above that managers have an important role to play. In order to support the manager and thus the employees in realising social value, the following steps are relevant.

Step

1: Getting started with a forward-looking vision of learning and development

An SME entrepreneur is better informed than anyone about relevant developments in his sector. Make use of that profound knowledge and develop a concrete vision of learning and development in line with your business strategy:

a. What are the relevant (market) developments that will influence your business processes and products/services? And what innovations would you like to realise in the coming years?

b. What does it mean for the work of your employees and therefore their required competences?

c. What steps can you currently take in your daily work to prepare or involve your employees in the innovations that are in the pipeline?

Step 2: Bring the outside world in

An important prerequisite for development is to make the need for development concrete and tangible for employees:

a. Share relevant business and sector developments regularly with employees, allowing them to see the bigger picture and understand where the business is heading.

b. Ensure that employees are regularly exposed to (feedback from) internal and external customers. This encourages teams of employees to contribute their thoughts and to continuously optimise (work) processes, and thus to develop.

c. Bring employees of different departments together to push (technical) boundaries and jointly work on innovations of products and services.

Step 3: Identify and utilise development potential

SME managers know their employees personally. Use that knowledge and invest time and effort to identify and utilise employee development potential.

a. Do not wait for requests for development from individual employees. Proactively enter into dialogue with individual employees to identify their development needs.

b. Offer employees a concrete outlook: make clear where they could be a few years down the road. This gives them clarity about the desired development and encourages development as a continuous process rather than on an ad hoc and incidental basis.

c. Offer a number of specific opportunities to start development gradually. Challenge employees to temporarily shadow a different job; or offer a small project that allows them to work together with other departments or disciplines.

d. Make teams of employees jointly responsible for the continuous optimisation of (sub) processes and regularly organise short team sessions to discuss bottlenecks, ideas and wishes within the team. Challenge teams to take up and monitor actions themselves: this promotes self-management and team development.

e. Ensure that senior staff coach young employees. Make smart use of the differences in experience, background or education by mixing teams.

Step 4: Offer work that continues to challenge development

a. Balance clarity and freedom: starters usually benefit from clarity and structure. It makes sense to offer more responsibility and control after a while. This challenges them to optimise work (processes) and take on more different tasks. For instance, by offering more independence, more customer contact or by involving employees in a larger part of the (sub)process.

b. Build up work challenges gradually by adding more difficult tasks to the job, by setting challenging goals and by giving people responsibility for small innovations or changes.

c. Broaden tasks or rotate people regularly to shape development step-by-step and ensure broad employability.

d. Make teams responsible for continuous improvement of processes or products/services and give them room to experiment.

Step 5: Reinforce continuous development by making it an integral part of the company

a. Make development a permanent component of the performance review cycle; don't just regularly review your employees' performance, but also challenge them to take advantage of development opportunities.

b. Encourage (department-transcending) knowledge sharing and set up an accessible company Intranet or internal social media to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing. The smart design of the physical working environment, in which different departments can easily find each other, also promotes knowledge sharing.

c. Train managers in conducting a regular dialogue on development. Giving regular feedback, converting mistakes into learning experiences and specifying a development path and development opportunities are particularly important in this respect.

d. Step by step, assign increasingly more responsibilities to teams and train them in continuous optimisation.

e. Make sure that mistakes are converted into learning experiences and guide teams in recognising and utilising each other's qualities. Make sure they feel sufficiently secure to learn from each other.

How does the Human Resource Management (HRM) value chain function in your organisation?

Human Resource Management (HRM), especially training and development, is an important pillar for the realisation of social value. It makes sense to examine the functioning of this important pillar if you truly intend to create social value. As with Gallup, here we look at the H M value chain, or popularly put: “How do you give substance to bathtub management?” (Lat, Burdorf, & Evers, 2008)

A strategy is only a strategy when employees understand it and act on it. Imagine this. You want to divide a bag of peas among a number of containers. To make pea soup, for example. You take a funnel in one hand and a bag of peas in the other. Then you throw all the peas at the same time into the funnel. What happens? The funnel instantly clogs up. We see the same effect in organisations. Management determines the strategy during the well-known pile-driving sessions (the bag of peas is full). Then they return to the workplace and pour out the new course all over the employees (emptying the bag of peas). A few weeks later, management is genuinely surprised that employees are not acting in line with the new strategy. A classic case of pea management.

This blockage is prevented by paying specific attention to the behaviour within and the identity of your organisation (see next chapter). Professional literature (freely adapted from (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2007)) says the following about different phases of HRM strategy:

• Intentional HRM strategy. These are the strategic thoughts and ideas of the policymakers.

• Implemented HRM strategy. This refers to the HRM activities actually implemented by line management. Good communication and training are essential in this respect.

• Observed HRM strategy. This is the implementation of the HRM policy as perceived by employees. And more importantly, it encourages employees to behave as desired.

• Realised HRM strategy. Only when the pea falls through the funnel into the desired container is there a realised HRM strategy. A strategy is only a strategy if the employees understand it and (can) act on it.

Once you have realised the intended HRM strategy, you realise social value.

The bathtub metaphor

The bathtub metaphor shows the difference between intentional and realised strategy. Generally, the aim is to translate the organisational strategy into an HRM strategy and to give it a practical form using HRM instruments. HR trains and coaches the line manager in the effective use of these instruments. This effort subsequently leads to influencing employee behaviour, which impacts on organisational performance.

r anisa ona strate y

r anisa ona perfor ance

r anisa on e e Indi idua e e

tude and beha iour of e p oyees

Follow this diagram from top left via the bottom to top right. Where in your organisation can you identify potential leakage in the bathtub?

The distinction between the intended (intentional) strategy and the actually experienced strategy is of great importance. A great deal of professional literature and course providers would have us believe that organisational success can be equated with the ability to design a strategy and then plan and monitor its implementation. The reality is different. Strategy development and its implementation is not nearly as effective as is commonly assumed. Managers will increasingly have to admit that the daily behaviour of employees is not so much influenced by strategic intentions. Covey concludes, for example: "only 37% of employees understand company objectives and 20% are enthusiastic about them". In other words: strategy is a verb!

B Corp: what does the standard require?

If we look at how the B Corp standard implements the concept of social value, the following building blocks form the basis:

• Offering financial security;

• Involvement of all employees;

• Attention to health and safety;

• Lifelong learning;

• Promoting involvement and enthusiasm.

As in the previous chapters, we will address these elements one by one, each time by means of an activating statement and brief explanation.

H M strate y H M instru ents

Interac on between ana er and e p oyee

H M outco es

Offer employees financial security

This may seem obvious, especially in the Western world . This aspect particularly applies to countries where employees do not have a minimum wage and collective labour agreements are still in their infancy. Still, the question for you is how to offer your employees financial security. Are the wages and working conditions clear and transparent from the employees' perspective? Moreover, this relates to extra allowances, bonuses and pension schemes. We look at whether permanent and temporary employees are offered an appropriate salary and employment benefits policy.

In many countries this has been regulated to a large extent. Nevertheless, as an employer there is room for additional arrangements that contribute to the well-being of employees. For example, additional arrangements with respect to health and well-being, such as promoting exercise and sport, fair remuneration and tailored leave arrangements that go beyond the statutory obligations. Research shows that these kinds of additional personalised arrangements are profitable investments.

Consider all employees!

You might think that in creating social value, you only consider employees on fixed-term or open-ended contracts. According to B Corp, this is too narrow a view. It is about all the people who - together with youensure that the ambitions of the organisation are realised. So, include temporary staff and volunteers if you want to increase the social value of your business.

Be mindful of health and safety

International influences of the B Corp standard are also evident here. It specifically inquires about the extent to which the employer provides (additional) health and safety benefits. There is an additional step, namely how your organisation actively pays attention to the health and safety of the people working within the organisation. For example, in addition to active absenteeism support, do you have activities that focus on preventive health and/or do you actively measure air quality?

Ensure lifelong learning

The opportunities for personal development your organisation offer are a relevant point of attention in the B Corp standard. How have you implemented employee training and development? This goes a few steps beyond offering the typical standard course, because B Corp wants to know details about, for example, any existing process for evaluating employee development. Additional questions include whether your managers are properly trained, whether the use and supervision of trainees is properly regulated and whether there are internal career paths. But also, whether there is a clear dismissal procedure.

It is worth emphasising once again that training and development goes beyond the conventional course mentioned above. Also consider in particular the development of employees in the form of coaching, workplace learning, giving presentations, but also offering training in literacy and financial planning. According to B Corp, paying attention to employee well-being clearly goes well beyond training employees to do their jobs.

Encourage engagement, passion and safety

The Corp standard starts with the hygiene factors such as the benefits package you offer as the employer. You are expected to set out the options you offer in a clear, unambiguous and accessible way in a staff manual. It is also important to consider the safety of the workplace and to comply with international standards such as ISO 45001. Make safety a major theme and enable employees to report safety risks and incidents anonymously.

The trick is to go beyond merely working on the hygiene factors referred to above. Also work on promoting engagement and enthusiasm among employees and ensure an open culture where employees feel comfortable to talk. Measure engagement and enthusiasm, monitor and research staff turnover and absenteeism, and take visible action to improve scores.

Create employee ownership

We see that in organisations where employee engagement and enthusiasm is high, this leads by definition to a sense of ownership, as the Gallup study cited in the previous chapter also shows. Furthermore, B Corp points to the possibility of employees literally becoming (co-)owners of the company. These measures contribute to employee engagement and earn points in the B Corp assessment.

Continuously develop your workforce (and yourself!)

To achieve a true impact business model, continued development of employees and yourself is an important lever. So make sure you actively encourage the development of all employees. For example, start working actively with the theme “succession planning” by asking yourself the following questions for each employee/position:

• Who is able to succeed this employee holding position X within one year?

• Who in one to three years?

• Who after three years?

6. Va ue for society

The third building block of the B Corp standard asks you the following questions:

• How does the organisation contribute to society? For example, does the organisation encourage people to volunteer or donate to social causes?

• In what way is the organisation active in offering opportunities to employees with a disadvantage on the labour market?

Let’s start with a number of theoretical perspectives. Once again, we challenge you to start in a slightly more abstract way and then dive into your own practice with the help of B Corp and look deeper.

Not for nothing did Einstein say:

Theoretical perspectives

In order to place the “value for society” building block in a theoretical perspective, we will first look at the impact pyramid and the pyramid of organisational awareness. These tools will help you define the value for society you want your business to create.

What do you mean, making an impact?

Some companies claim to make an impact by adhering to the principles of corporate social responsibility. Others claim that their company works fine because it complies with laws and regulations. Before we know it, we are faced with a language confusion of Babylonian proportions. What do we actually mean by making social impact? The “impact pyramid”, an adaptation of the pyramid as included in the speech of Professor aren Maas (Maas, 2019) is an excellent line of thought and action for this.

"We cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it"

Compliance with laws and regula ons

Corporate Social esponsibility

Good for the organisa on, good for society

Impact

The foundation of the pyramid is formed by “compliance with legislation and regulations”, or the minimum variant. However, you can properly comply with the laws and regulations, but still act in a socially harmful way by emitting CO2, for example, and meeting the legal norm with the narrowest of margins.

With corporate social responsibility, as Karen Maas puts it in her speech, you ensure that your organisation performs less badly. You do this, for example, by taking specific actions to reduce your CO2 emission.

In the next phase, the organisation considers both society and itself. For example, using electric vehicles, thereby saving fuel costs at the same time.

“During the “impact” phase”, Maas says, people no longer think in terms of financial context: "... but rather in terms of delivering an explicit positive contribution to society from the unique position and strength of the company itself".

By focusing on the identity of the company, you create an impact on society

As Maas points out, it is about the unique position and strength of the company itself. This is where the field of identity marketing provides good starting points, defined in the so-called pyramid of organisational awareness developed by Kaj Morel

Consciousness

Transforma on threshold

Perfor ance e a onship Sur i a

Just as Maslow's pyramid of needs is for people, the pyramid of organisational awareness takes the organisation as its starting point for developing a conscious organisation. The position in the pyramid of organisational awareness is not right or wrong, but a factual observation that:

• It is literally unhealthy for an organisation and its employees to remain stuck in the lower stages of awareness for any length of time;

• A clearly defined identity starts from the observation that it is not your organisation that is the focus, but rather the impact that you and your organisation have on the environment.

Take a look at the various stages and determine which stage your organisation is in.

Stage 1: Survival awareness

This stage is about the survival of the organisation, with financial health as the starting point. The risk in this stage is that people will literally and figuratively fight for survival. This results in feelings of fear and distrust between employees, with all the associated consequences. Instead of investing energy in the future, the energy leaks away into fear and distrust.

Stage 2: Relationship awareness

When you no longer need to worry about survival, stage two comes into play. The focus is on constructive cooperation with colleagues, customers and partners. If you go overboard during this phase, relationships become the focus and being nice to each other becomes the norm, while challenging goals put pressure on relationships. Then you run the risk of confusing “being nice” with acting professionally.

Stage 3: Performance awareness

Naturally, you want your organisation to be successful, because who doesn't enjoy being part of a successful team? However, even at this stage, the risk of “going overboard” is present, especially if the goal of being the best becomes an end in itself. Before you know it, you look only at the figures and lose sight of issues of innovation, employee and customer needs because status and financial gain have become the dominant influence.

Transformation

Once you start to perceive your organisation as a means to add value to society, you have reached the point of transformation. This usually leads to an elevated commitment of employees and customers within organisations and a high degree of renewal. Innovation that is aimed at finding the so-called “niche” in society instead of the “niche” in the market.

Stage 4: Conscious awareness

At this stage, everyone in the organisation is fully aware that conscious work is important for the employee and thus for the organisation. At this stage, employees feel responsible, give open and honest feedback without fear of possible consequences, and there is an atmosphere of professionalism and equality. The mission of the organisation and the employees are aligned, resulting in a robust organisation that stands for its (societal) values.

Increasing your social impact?

The following questions are helpful in obtaining a clear view on how you want your organisation to make an impact:

• What do I believe in? (Ideology)

Please state your ideology. What do you fundamentally believe in? What are your views? What is nonnegotiable for you? The list is not exhaustive but must be tailored to your situation. How aware of your surroundings are you?

• How do you view the world and what do you aspire to? (Vision)

Please describe your view of the world around you. Obviously, this view is influenced by your ideological beliefs. A view relates to both the now (what do I see around me?) and the future (what would I like to see?). Your view of the present shows what moves you to take action, what you think could be improved

or what you cannot tolerate. Your view of the future reflects what you see as the desired end result, what you dream of. A vision that covers both the now and the future provides maximum direction.

• What is your meaning? (Mission & promise)

Please state your meaning here. The mission is literally the task/calling based on the vision. You also need a promise to clarify your meaning to others, the world and yourself.

•

Heritage and history

Every human being has been shaped through a unique process. Consider the location of the cot you slept in, the family you were raised in, the school you went to and your working life. Look for major highlights and the various crucial moments that have shaped your life and views.

• How do people perceive you? (Core values and value orientation)

Your core values (the how) show how you are identified by others. Is it fast, deep or joyful? These are 3-5 values that best characterise you. They are the most typical character traits that largely determine how you are.

• What are your desires and ambitions (how do you see your future?)

Base your thoughts on desirability, not feasibility. What do you focus on? What does the world notice about you? What do you want to achieve? Distinguish between short and long term. Through these questions, we also want to encourage you to determine honestly whether you are true to yourself and whether your current identity reflects who you are.

• How do you keep it vibrant?

This last section focuses on keeping your identity vibrant. How do you nurture it? How do you involve your surroundings? It is helpful to establish a daily routine to keep your identity fresh and to develop it further.

With these theoretical perspectives in mind, we will look at the key points of the B Corp standard.

Looking at the standard from the perspective of “value for society”, relevant issues include creating a sense of community, diversity, equality, inclusiveness and social engagement. Below is an explanation of the different topics.

Create a sense of community with your business model

If you succeed in creating a sense of community through your business model, you will have taken a major step forward in creating conscious business. Whether it relates to supporting the local football club or ensuring that your company employs as many disadvantaged people as possible, in both cases, you contribute to a sense of community. To further clarify the difference between the types of business models B Corp distinguishes, the first example relates to working on an operational business model and the second example to working on an impact business model.

Ensure diversity, equality and inclusiveness internally...

The B Corp standard addresses the themes of diversity, equality and inclusiveness in several ways. For example, it considers:

B Corp: what does the standard require?

• Diversity in share ownership, or in other words, are different groups involved in the company, for example through shareholdership? Moreover, from this perspective, “employee ownership” is also a relevant theme;

• Does the organisation take these themes into account in its HR policy? Where is this reflected, for example, in the recruitment of new employees, gender equality with respect to remuneration, career development opportunities, and the extent to which the policy is age aware

Another relevant topic is employee remuneration. Explicit consideration is given to the relationship between the highest and lowest paid employees. What does this ratio say about the position and responsibility the entrepreneur assumes within society? What does it say about inclusiveness and equal opportunities?

…and e terna y

B Corp also pushes you to challenge the organisations you work with or have a procurement relationship with to be more diverse, exclusive and equal. Literally by asking what percentage of purchases are made from companies that explicitly address these themes. And what is your goal in terms of developing that percentage?

Contribute to socio-economic development

As an entrepreneur, it is about contributing to the socio-economic development of the region where you are established. You feel a shared responsibility for creating new jobs, you choose partners from the region, you choose suppliers from the region, and you work with a principal banker that has a positive impact on society. Here too, you see that you are in fact using your business (model) to challenge your environment to do good. And yes, conscious entrepreneurship does go hand in hand with earning a good living, according to research described in the book “Conscious Capitalism” (Mackey & Sisodia, 2014)

Promote social engagement

A company's social engagement is reflected in the extent to which employees volunteer and are encouraged and facilitated by the employer in terms of time and/or money. Another angle is the extent to which the organisation donates to charity or invests in the (local) community in other ways. In addition to this practical perspective, B Corp also looks at the way in which the organisation gives meaning to its social engagement in terms of policy. For example, the policy under the heading of corporate social responsibility or the way in which you as an organisation - jointly with industry partners - develop initiatives to improve the social, ecological and societal performance of your sector.

Motivate the chain by closely examining your suppliers!

Motivating the supply chain is about how your organisation's suppliers are making an impact. Investigate whether the parties you purchase from take the environment into account and ensure they use no child labour or have any other negative impact. You can even go a step further by actively supporting your suppliers in increasing their positive impact. This could include screening and/or agreeing a code of conduct with your suppliers.

7. co o ica a ue

The fourth building block of the B Corp standard asks questions regarding the impact on the ecological value:

• Does the organisation assess key suppliers on social, environmental and societal impact?

• Has the organisation reduced gas, water and energy consumption and/or CO2 emissions in the past year?

• Does the organisation have a recovery and recycling programme for the products and company facilities supplied?

Inspired by the books “The Blue Economy” (Pauli, 2012) and “Products that last” (Bakker, Hollander, Hinte, & Zijlstra, 2019), we reflect on the theme of ecological value. Pete Seeger inspires with the following quote which has been widely circulated on social media:

“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production”

Theoretical perspectives

If we look at it from the perspective of ecological value, the following key questions arise:

• Can I avoid having a negative (e.g., ecological) impact, for example by designing and producing my product differently?

• Can I reduce the impact?

• What can I do to offset my impact?

It is easier for the planet to live without us than for us to live without the planet!

Numerous scientific studies have shown that the supply of natural resources is finite. Whether we are talking about oil or, for example, lead and zinc - many of these raw materials will no longer be available in the foreseeable future, the initiative www.overshootday.org shows us. So, it is imperative to think about a circular strategy for your business.

The Blue Economy

The debates around circular business carry the risk of a negative approach. The press regularly reports that if countries go circular it would have a minimal effect. The beauty of the book “The Blue economy” (Pauli, 2012) is the hopeful and realistic message that we can do business in a more innovative, healthy, better and sustainable way. Pauli focuses on two basic principles:

1. Use nature as a source of inspiration for resources and techniques to work in a circular way;

2. Create a cycle so that there is no loss of raw materials.

Pauli cites numerous examples in his book, ranging from termite mounds as a source of inspiration from nature for temperature control in buildings to the use of silk as a sustainable raw material. To achieve a closed cycle, consider using coffee plant residues (less than 2% of the plant ends up in coffee) to grow mushrooms. Or another example, growing algae to produce algae oil as a replacement for palm oil.

Designing for eternity

There is much to gain from good design, as many products are designed for a limited lifespan. For example, one of the first light bulbs2 is still burning today!

Only, it was decided that such durability did not suit the business model of the time. Thinking about redesign and the associated business models is a challenging issue, therefore. The good news is that you can start today by examining your organisation's (production) process and asking yourself the following questions:

• Can I redesign my process to make it circular? Take the jeans of Mudjeans, for example. By reusing old jeans and redesigning the production process, they make a difference.

• Can I promote reuse? Like the Dutch firm Auping does, for example, by charging a deposit for their mattresses;

• Can my product be easily repaired, restored, reconditioned and/or refurbished? The Fairphone is a good example. A phone that is easy to repair (by yourself), lasting longer as a result;

• And if there is no other way: can my product be recycled, as has been done for years with waste paper?

Reflect on the business model

In our educational and consulting experience with many organisations, we see that organisations are often quick to conclude that working in a circular way offers many opportunities. To identify these opportunities, the first step is to reflect on the business model and the set-up of the value chain of your organisation from purchase and sales to production and delivery. The question is where to introduce circularity in the value chain. This is a typical question where you can involve students with fresh ideas. And in particular, let them look at how you can encourage circularity throughout the chain your organisation is a part of.

The previously mentioned book “Products that last” (Bakker, Hollander, Hinte, & Zijlstra, 2019), a result of a Delft University of Technology project, provides a number of clear examples of circular business models that are briefly explained below. Which business model can you use to move your business forward, looking at the basic models described below?

Classic durable model

Based on this model, you offer a durable product with a long lifespan. Under the principle of: "It's expensive, but it never breaks down". The Miele washing machine is a typical example of this.

Hybrid model

This model exists by the grace of cheaper products with a short lifespan. These are often added as a service to a physical product. For example, printer toners or coffee cups from Nespresso can be returned for reuse.

Middleman model

The “middleman” exists because it lives off existing systems, resulting in reuse or extension of the life cycle of a product. For instance, selling second-hand goods, suppliers of refurbished equipment or smartphone repairers.

Access model

Under this model you get access to the use of a product. You pay for usage and not for ownership. Examples include rental constructions, shared bikes, scooters and cars.

Performance model

In the performance model, the provider is responsible for the performance. The provider decides which products/services will be used to deliver the agreed performance. Examples include a provider of cloud services, a taxi or the Mitsubishi M-Use where you pay for each lift movement. You are not delivering a product but a service of which a product can be a part.

Start by looking at current processes

A good place to start is by literally visualising your organisation's (production) process. By taking a step-by-step look at your own process, opportunities for circularity will become clear. The 10 Rs described in the diagram below offer an excellent departure point to mirror the processes.

Smarter production and smarter use

Refuse

No longer use or offer something completely different so that use (of a harmful product) is no longer necessary

Rethink Use a product more intensively, for example by reusing, swapping and sharing

Reduce Use fewer natural resources or use other nonhazardous materials

Extend the life cycle of a product

Reuse Reuse by other than the original consumer or use of a discarded product that still functions well Repair Repairing and maintaining a defective product so that it remains in use

Refurbish Restoring an old product so that it functions “as new” again

Remanufacture Using parts of a discarded product in a new product with the same function

Repurpose Using parts of a discarded product in a new product with a new function

Recovering materials

Recycle Recycling materials to reuse with the same or a lower quality Recover Incinerating materials to recover energy

Source: Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Potting et al, Circular Economy: Measuring innovation in product chains, 2016

B Corp: what does the standard require?

The B Corp standard also provides insights for creating ecological value, which we summarise in a number of actionable principles.

Enhance environmental stewardship to use water, land and life as efficiently as possible

The B Corp standard presents numerous suggestions in this respect: are buildings sustainable, have measures been implemented to reduce the consumption of gas, water and light, and is there a green procurement policy? Three questions that allow you to take major steps forward.

In addition to the more technical measures, the B Corp by default looks at the opportunities you offer your employees to work from home in order to reduce car mileage for commuting purposes. Also consider how you

can put into practice the mobility policy and, for example, motivate employees to ride their bicycle to work. Experience shows that a large proportion of employees live within cycling distance of their work yet still drive to work.

Measuring = Knowing

B Corp promotes and values the reduction of energy consumption. As with all elements of the standard, the adage “measuring = knowing” also applies here. By measuring energy consumption and the use of renewable energy, you encourage yourself (and others) to take action to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions.

Is waste really waste or the new gold?

A relevant starting point to optimise your regular business model from an ecological value perspective is the waste you produce. It is precisely by gaining insight into the waste streams that allows you to quickly make improvements as an organisation. The 10R model referred to in the theoretical section provides an excellent starting point and assists in determining whether waste is really waste or a “new” raw material.

Provide environmental education for colleagues and customers

By taking steps to improve your own environmental performance, you can create awareness among your employees and supply chain partners, such as customers and suppliers. In this way, you link the topic "ecology" with the topics "social and customer value" (Chapter 5) and "making an impact together with your customer" (Chapter 8). By making colleagues, suppliers and customers aware of the impact they have on the environment, great leaps forward can be achieved in the entire chain. One of the participants in the B Corp learning-workingdoing projects organises meetings at customers' premises to encourage employees to eat more healthily. Another example is organising sessions on digital working to reduce paper waste.

Work with conscious products and services

Looking at the products and services you provide, do you deliver multiple value? Do your products and services add value or not? A few examples:

• You want to run a conscious café, but you still use plastic straws;

• The fleet of cars your account managers use consists of cars that use fossil fuels;

• You haven't looked at the energy consumption involved in the production of your product for ages;

• The textiles you sell are produced using child labour and the process uses an extreme amount of water. Surely, you can think of more examples from your own practice.

Reduce your ecological footprint

Within service organisations, the focus is on reducing energy and fuel consumption. For companies that produce or supply physical products, there is also the use of raw and auxiliary materials. Also consider the use of packaging materials and transport. Make agreements with parties in the chain to jointly reduce your ecological footprint.

Smyle

The start-up Smyle is a good example. They sell toothpaste in a jar instead of in a tube. By focusing on toothpaste in tablet form, they aim to reduce the waste stream of 1.5 billion plastic tubes we use worldwide each year.

For more information go to: www.wesmyle.com

8. Make an i pact to ether with your custo er

The fifth building block of the B Corp standard asks you the following questions:

• Does your organisation encourage customers to engage in circular/conscious business?

• Does your organisation work together with customers and suppliers to create an increasingly more circular chain?

• Which niche in society do you contribute to, together with your customers and suppliers?

With this last building block, B Corp completes the proverbial circle. By being aware of the entire chain and the role, responsibility and exemplary role you fulfil towards customers and suppliers, you make an impact with your business model. You fulfil a pioneering role. The slogan of Greyston Bakery is a wonderful example:

Theoretical perspectives

As far as we are concerned, making an impact - together with the customer - starts with having a clear idea of the value proposition your business model offers. In this chapter, we will explore your business model together, using the book Business Model Generation (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) as a source of inspiration. The search helps you to incorporate the insights thus gained in and/or assess them against the business model you advocate. It is not surprising that the B Corp standard focuses on the functioning of your business model.

Focus on customer and market

To get a good picture of the customer and the market, we recommend answering the following six questions.

1. What do your customers look like?

Start by finding out what your customers look like, literally and figuratively. What drives your customers, especially in terms of conscious business? Is their ambition similar to yours, or is there still some missionary work to be done?

2. In what ways do you interact with your customers?

By finding out which communication channels you use with your customer, you can also see the possibilities of convincing them of your conscious ambition. Does the customer read your ideas on the website, in your newsletter and in your client presentations?

3. Who are your top 10 customers?

And then a step further: who are your top 10 customers? Do these customers reflect your ambitions, or did they happen to you? This is how you find out which customers you have contact with and about what, the turnover you realise with each customer, and of course this will allow you to explicitly identify any opportunities for increasing the significance of your business model - together with these customers.

4. How have you segmented the market?

The next question is about how you have segmented your market, starting with the seemingly simple question: what variables are on the X and Y axis? Consider variables such as: turnover, profitability, interest in conscious entrepreneurship, interest in the vision of your company, social impact, etcetera.

“We don't hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people”

5. Are you focusing on a niche in the market or a niche in society?

And then comes the million-dollar question: does your business model start from the old niche in the market and are you going to use the B Corp standard to reduce your organisation's negative impact on society and expand its positive impact? Or will you take it a step further and start with an impact business model by fully focusing on a “niche in society”? Which of the 17 UN development goals do you want to contribute to?

6. What benefit will your product/service bring to the customer?

On the one hand, you answer this sixth question in a classic sense by listing the benefits of your product or service. From B Corp's point of view, there is a clarifying question: To what extent does your product or service deliver multiple value to your customers in a social, environmental, societal and/or economic sense?

Matching internal organisation to ambitions

The next step is to apply the images of the market and the customer to the workings of the internal organisation. This involves the following six questions.

1. What areas of concern do you solve for your customer?

Whereas the previous question focused on the benefits, this question focuses on the customer's concerns. From the perspective of the classic business model, this may relate to how your service and/or product prevents “pain” for the customer. For example, an administration office relieves the pain of the entrepreneur who does not enjoy doing his administration. In line with conscious entrepreneurship, a reformulation of the question is appropriate in this case: which difficulty does your customer experience if he also wants to start creating multiple value? And how can your business model help alleviate or prevent these difficulties?

2. What value does your organisation deliver to customers?

In this eighth question you combine the insights into a clear value proposition for your customer. For example, the value proposition of Eshuis Accountants and Advisers, formulated as an ambition reads: "We help our clients to be more successful, so that they make an impact on the social and economic position of the region". The second part of this ambition, in particular, expresses the focus on conscious entrepreneurship.

3. What is the motto your work is based on? It's even better if you can formulate the intended value proposition more clearly. Here are a few conscious examples:

• Crystal clear water. In every ocean, from every tap | Dopper|.

• Together we make 100% slavery-free the norm in chocolate | Tony's Chocolony |

• 1 million drops |Asito |

• Because everyone deserves warmth, protection and dignity | Sheltersuit |

These and the previous two questions will also help you determine whether your organisation's mission and vision are B Corp proof.

4. What process have you set up?

As we mentioned in chapter 8 on ecological value, it is important to map your business process in order to identify the starting points for more and more circular, social and societal entrepreneurship.

5. What is required for a properly functioning work process?

This is where you bring into focus staffing, accommodation, machinery and information you need in order to make your business model work. This is also a useful exercise to determine where there is room for improvement from a B Corp perspective.

6. What does the business model look like?

And yes, conscious businesses also exist to make money and preferably in a conscious way. With this concluding question, you get a clear idea of what the business model of the organisation looks like. For inspiration, the following question: Which organisation earns the most money, A or B?

Organisation A Organisation B

Focused on maximum profitability and shareholder value Focused on maximising well-being for all stakeholders

Focused on becoming the most popular brand possible Focused on being a good employer for its employees

Focused on selling as many products and services as possible Focused on being a good partner for suppliers

Focused on maximising market share Focused on providing as much value as possible to customers Focused on minimising costs Focused on being an honest company

It should be clear that type B organisations create more value in the long term, as shown by the research detailed in the book "Firms of endearment, second edition" (Mackey & Sisodia, 2014).

B Corp: what does the standard require?

The B Corp standard also offers a number of practical insights for making an impact with customers, which we will briefly discuss below.

Make an impact through your business model

Decide how you can make a social, ecological or societal impact with the products and/or services you provide. Or as stated before, look for a niche in society rather than a niche in the market. The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations can be a source of inspiration in this respect. And if you manage to express this in a value proposition for your customers, you will have made significant strides in using your "business as a force for good".

A business model can be defined as follows:

“A business model describes how an organisation, or network of organisations, wants to create value for its customers, for itself and for other stakeholders”. From this definition, it is immediately clear that value creation is the key concept in the description of a business model.

We also see this reflected in the various methods for (re)designing a business model. After all, the key issue is the value that is created for customers and stakeholders and how this value creation can be realised. Value appears to be a multiple concept. It is not only about the value for customers and the revenues for the provider(s) of a product or service. It is increasingly about the broader impact on people, ecology and society and how to deal with this in a conscious manner. This is also referred to as sustainable business models, i.e., business models that create economic value, as well as social and ecological value. One example is business models for the circular economy aimed at closing raw material cycles and preventing waste.

Dr. Timber Haaker, Professor of Applied Science in Business Models

Work with and on passionate customers

As described in chapter “Value for society”, you create social impact when an organisation has passionate employees and therefore passionate customers. The B Corp standard asks the following questions:

• How is customer satisfaction/enthusiasm measured and mapped?

• How does your organisation make it clear to customers that you aim to achieve positive impact?

The higher your customers rate you and position, the more enthusiastic they are about your organisation and the products and services you provide.

Applying the Net Promoter Score in daily practice is an excellent method to improve customer satisfaction. You can calculate the NPS after asking your customer the following question:

How likely is it that you will recommend us to a friend or colleague? The customer can give a score from 0 to 10.

"Can't imagine doing without you " "You are the perfect match for me!

"I am proud to be your customer "I am treated with respect

"I am treated fairly

"A deal is a deal

"I am sa s ed

Inte rity Trust

"You are irreplaceable "I love telling others about you "

"Your brand matches me! "You are part of my daily work"

"Problems are solved promptly

"You inspire con dence

"My basic request is being met

Source: Adapted from Gallup, The Next Discipline

Next, the results are applied to the following three groups:

• Promoters: respondents who have given a score of 9 or 10. They literally promote your organisation, making them active ambassadors;

• Neutral: respondents who have given a score of 7 or 8;

• Critics: respondents who have given a score ranging from 0 to 6. These customers will certainly not actively promote your organisation. You run the risk of them advising friends and acquaintances against using your organisation.

Work for conscious customers

Looking at your client portfolio, to what extent do you work for conscious clients? For example, do you consciously choose to carry out assignments for civil society organisations or do you choose to do the most profitable job for a major corporation?

Your clients' data is in good hands with your organisation

It is important to realise that even the smallest of your actions or those of your employees can affect your company's image. One example is the degree of care you take with the data you collect about your customers. In other words, are you complying with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

Complete the circle

In Chapter 4, “Mission, Vision and Governance”, we started by looking at your organisation's mission, vision and governance. In subsequent chapters you looked at the extent to which you add societal, social and ecological value. This chapter we check how you can further develop your business model in collaboration with your customers.

Discovering

Be accountable

As the figure above shows, “reflexive monitoring” is an important step in the B Corp cycle. As this book has undoubtedly shown, it is not merely about hard facts and figures. It is also about the experiences you have and the dilemmas you are faced with. By being actively accountable to all stakeholders, you create a dialogue about the impact you make and learn how you are perceived by others.

the niche in society Assessing value (s)

Further development of the business model

e exive monitoring

9. Workin towards certification

As far as we are concerned, certification is not a goal in itself. Even without certification, B Corp offers an excellent set of insights, examples and benchmarks to work systematically on a sustainable business model. If you want to work towards certification, consider the following steps.

The art of making a start!

In the assessment, you will be asked to answer numerous questions and be able to produce documents to support your answers. You will also be asked to provide various facts and figures such as turnover, profit and number of employees. In practice, we have noticed that recording the insights, facts and figures as part of the day-to-day work leads to the lowest “administrative burden”. So don't hesitate and create an account right now at https://bimpactassessment.net/

Start with a B Corp search through your company

To understand how an organisation realises social value, the person responsible for HR policy is an important point of contact. When it comes to mission and vision, management is the first point of contact. A relevant question each time is: whom do I talk to about this building block in order to complete my B Corp quest? The table below provides a guideline for bringing the right people to the table. In larger organisations, this will undoubtedly include several people. In smaller companies, one person will be responsible for multiple areas.

Subject Areas of responsibility

Mission, vision, strategy, governance Board and management

Ethics, transparency, human resources, employee induction, working conditions, employee engagement, diversity

Facts, figures and finance

Impact in the chain

Staff and organisation

Finance and control

Procurement

Environmental management and societal impact Corporate Social Responsibility

Interplay with the customer Sales

Experience shows that getting started is the trick. Starting with a search for the solutions already present in your organisation, as well as good habits that are in place. We have positive experiences with the following route.

Raise-awareness meeting

Organise a raise-awareness meeting for the management to find out what vision conscious entrepreneurship is based on.

Appoint an initiator

Appoint an initiator who starts with an initial inventory. This workbook can be used as an excellent starting point.

Start using the B Corp impact assessment

Complete the assessment by entering the insights into the B Corp Assessment tool that can be found on the B Corp website: https://B Corporation.net

Work action-oriented

The next step is to form a B Corp team of people from different disciplines. It's nice to go through the online questionnaire together and to optimise it as part of the work. The questionnaire is designed in such a way that it keeps track of the “point score” and offers the option to set up and monitor actions.

Start working with B Corp: writing things down is not enough! Once you start working with the B Corp standard, some of the principles behind B Corp become clear, such as “writing things down is not enough”. For example, you’re awarded zero points for describing the social and ecological impact of the company. The number of points increases as soon as you literally show action and, for example, clearly demonstrate the commitment to realise social, ecological and/or societal value by means of the mission and vision.

Getting certified?

If you iteratively go through the steps as described above, at some stage the self-assessment will show you that you have passed the 80-point mark. This is the moment to decide whether you want to be certified or not.

Based on interviews with the participants in the various learning-working-doing projects, we see the following advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

Disadvantages

B Corp offers clear tools for systematic improvement The obligation to record things in writing, which is perceived as an administrative burden

Opportunity to benchmark with organisations from different sectors Obtaining the certificate requires a considerable time investment

There is one language for working on conscious entrepreneurship within the organisation There are already (too) many certificates

Continue improving

As it should be with any certification, the certificate is not the end but the beginning of a process of continuous improvement, so conduct periodic follow-up measurements to ensure progress and initiate new actions. Do not fall into the trap of “classic monitoring”, i.e., focusing exclusively on facts and figures. Preferably work according to the principles of reflexive monitoring. More background on the method of reflexive monitoring can be found at: https://drift.eur.nl/

Transi on perspec e

Syste ana ysis P annin and contro

e e i e onitorin

e e op ent oriented pert

Par cipa on

Chan e i pro e ent perspec e

Inter iew: shuis ccountants and d isers

Conscious entrepreneurship and the leverage effect of B Corp

Saxion Conscious Business Lab and Eshuis Accountants and Advisers are the initiators of BCorpTwente. "Our aim is to create an unstoppable movement of conscious business” says Mark de Lat, partner at Eshuis

The baker eats his own bread

"With the learning-working-doing sessions that we organise in cooperation with Saxion, we bring entrepreneurs together and encourage each other to take action and contribute to social, ecological, societal and economic value through their own business models. Eshuis is not only the driving force behind B Corp, but also a participant. The baker eats his own bread. If we motivate our business relations to do business in a more conscious way, then we also need to take more steps", says Evelyn Landhuis from Eshuis

Making an impact on multiple fronts

A B Corp team has been set up within Eshuis. This team builds on the baseline measurement. "We are now energetically working to convert the insights from this baseline measurement into specific actions for creating multiple value and impact. Actions that range from making our procurement and mobility policies more sustainable to taking the initiative towards our (inter)national branch organisation", is how Mark describes the steps that have been taken.

Going the extra mile

"We find that the B Corp tool keeps us on our toes. It makes us go the extra mile. It also forces us to make issues such as sustainability as concrete as possible, both for ourselves and for our customers", is how Evelyn describes the relevance of the B Corp standard. “We also apply this to our daily work, for example, by pointing out to customers new laws and regulations regarding the energy transition. For example, the obligation that offices must have energy label C by 1 January 2023. Implementing sustainability themes also means training our colleagues on sustainability issues that are relevant to our customers", adds Mark.

B Corp as the basis for impact reporting

When asked how B Corp fits in with Eshuis' ambition, Mark replies: “Working with the B Corp system helps us give substance to our ambition. We combine this with the Sustainable Development Goals as formulated by the UN. Our ambition is to help clients become more successful in such a way that they make an impact on the social and economic position of the region, one day at a time. We try to challenge clients to do the right thing with their own business model. In doing so, we seriously stimulate the growth of conscious entrepreneurship. This was the motivation behind starting the B Corp series in collaboration with Saxion. The B Corp standard holds up a mirror to us and this is how we have been able to turn our ambition into reality.” Not surprisingly, this mirroring with respect to the B Corp standard was the basis for the recently released impact report, Evelyn concludes.

10. itt e chan e is not enou h

Realise - certainly if you are working from an existing business model - that a little change is not enough. You are dealing with a transition. According to Professor Jan Rotmans, a transition involves a fundamental change in the structure, culture and methodology of a system:

• Structure: institutional, economic and physical infrastructure of a system;

• Culture: shared views, values and paradigms;

• Practices: daily routines, rules and behaviour.

Certainly in the case of existing business models, conscious entrepreneurship involves a transition in thinking and acting that takes several years. Such a transition requires insight into the history and future of an organisation and a conversion into an appropriate transition approach. The following levers can be used: direction, reputation, relationship, routines and exchange. Below, these levers are discussed in more detail on the basis of the metaphor “Break through the wall of transition”.

Transi on i pact

1 3 years 1 5 years 5 10 years 10 years

At the start, you would do well to ask yourself whether the issues facing the organisation require a change or transition approach. In this respect, we distinguish between fiscal year change management, change management and transition management. Many financially-oriented organisations expect a change to have a return on investment within one financial year. We view this as fiscal year change management, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, it is important to realise that these are short-cycle changes or improvements that you, as an organisation, intend to earn back within a year or by way of depreciation.

If the change relates to a prolonged period and requires a more integral approach, then we need to adopt a change management approach. In his inaugural lecture entitled “Societal Innovation: between dream and reality lies complexity” (Rotmans, 2005), Rotmans sets out the difference between current policy and transition policy as seen from a government's perspective. The table below shows the distinction between change management and transition management.

Current policy Transition policy

Short time horizon: 5-10 years

Facet approach: limited number of actors, one scale level, one domain.

Long time horizon (25-30 years)

Integrated system approach: multi-actor, multi-level, multi-domain.

Aimed at sustainable system innovations Common forms of control

Aimed at system optimisation

Complexity and uncertainty as a problem

Mix of old and new forms of control

Complexity and uncertainty as a starting point

Regular policy arenas Transition arenas Linear knowledge development and dissemination

Learning-by-doing, doing-by-learning and learningby-learning

Many organisations take too little time for the actual transitions, or as otmans puts it: “Profound transition requires at least five to ten years, and in my experience, more likely ten than five years”. As a result, many organisations get stuck in operational matters due to pressure of profitability and production discussions rather than managing the transition that is, by definition, ongoing. It is often said, therefore, that many transitions fail. Our assumption, however, is that they do not necessarily fail, but rather are declared a failure too soon. Actual transitions require more than one financial year to come to fruition. From a transition perspective, we assume three three-year periods: (1) looking for niches and experimenting, (2) absorbing and accelerating and (3) achieving breakthroughs.

The phase of “looking for niches and experimenting”, requires courage to start from the organisation and management. Starting by looking for niches in places within the organisation where changes are already occurring and which fit the desired future image. The trick, according to Ben Tiggelaar, is to work on the basis of learning objectives and not performance objectives, precisely to provide the space to make mistakes and learn from them. Or as he puts it: The quickest way to performance is by taking a learning detour. By regularly reflecting on learning, it becomes increasingly clear which initiatives and actions work and which do not. In this phase, you build towards actions and interventions that work one step at a time.

At some point, the organisation and its employees will have a bundle of actions and interventions at its disposal to absorb and work with, allowing them to produce results in terms of both learning and performance. This is the beginning of the “absorb and accelerate” phase. These actions can be used to accelerate and make the intended effects visible, thus “infecting” more employees who start working in line with the envisaged future.

Subsequently, the bundle of interventions will become so solid that new behaviour and work processes will see the light of day, bringing us into the phase of “achieving breakthroughs”. In this phase, it is important to perpetuate these and to let them become part of the envisaged new structure or as mentioned above, the new regime. This topples the wall of transition, and the vision of the future becomes a reality.

Organisational archaeology

The quote by philosopher and writer George Santayana (1863-19 2) “Who does not know his history is doomed to repeat it” highlights the relevance of organisational archaeology. Without knowledge of the history of the healthcare system, the logic behind the number of hospitals in a country cannot be understood. And the relevance of historical awareness certainly applies to organisations.

Historically established rules

Many rules within organisations are historically established, without us realising this today. The statement “This is how we have always done it here” is often already historically charged. To gain insight into the history

of the organisation, creating a timeline can be an insightful exercise. Take a look back in time and describe the key moments in the organisation's history using dates. Consider questions such as:

• When was the organisation founded?

• Who founded the organisation and what personal characteristics did he/she inject into the organisation?

• What good and bad moments has the organisation experienced?

• Who has stood at the helm and what impact did they have on the organisation?

• And in the context of the B Corp standard: which standards has the organisation worked with and what were the resulting positive and negative experiences?

This historical awareness adds colour to the functioning of the current regime. Or as Loorbach puts it: “a regime concerns the collective ways of thinking, working and organising that have grown historically.” “This makes the word regime often equal to the word structure.” And as many will recognise, structure tends to continue to exist even if it is not necessarily functional with respect to new issues. After all, new issues cannot be tackled with old solutions. This often requires the courage to look and act differently.

If you look closely, however, many organisations have so-called niches. Places and people within the organisation who want to and can work differently. Remarkably, these people do not always get the recognition they deserve, as they are often perceived as difficult. In such cases, there is a significant risk of these people being pushed out of the regime. So how do you deal with people with fresh or unconventional ideas within the organisation? Let's be realistic, though. Too much of a good thing also leads to unwanted effects. However, we urge you to look closely at how you can use the niches, the people with fresh or unconventional ideas in order to keep playing the game that changes by definition. Also consider engaging students and new colleagues who have not yet been contaminated by history.

Game changers

We mentioned the relevance of historical awareness and the effect of history on the prevailing regime. To break the prevailing regime, the challenge is to sketch a future that is attractive to those directly involved. This is already a break with the prevailing literature on change management as expressed in “The Fifth Discipline” (Senge, 2006), which claims that urgency is required. Well, for many employees, urgency equals the risk of a fear reflex which - as we know from psychology - leads to three reactions: flee, fight or freeze. In all three cases, this is not the desired action when it comes to the intended changes. It is desirable, therefore, to develop a sensory description of the future. A future that inspires and invites employees to “go on a journey”. The insights gained from history and the description of a desired future create understanding of the transition path for the organisation and the actions required become clear.

Mapping the rules of the game

Transition management recommends categorising this "from - to action" into three areas: structure, culture and methodology. In other words: map the rules of the game.

Structure

Structure involves both the structure of the market the organisation operates in and the structure that is required of the organisation to be future proof. Let’s not forget that structure is also determined by applicable laws and regulations, which are subject to change.

Methodology

The methodology relates to typical actions and routines of the system, or literally "This is how we work here!". Long-established working methods are difficult to break out of. They are literally and figuratively changing practices, for example as a result of ongoing digitisation. In practice, we still regularly see a paper reality,

varying from manually entering receipts to sending pay slips on paper. These practices can be influenced by innovation and experimentation, so that people experience that things can be done differently.

Culture

Since effective change is actually brought about by different and often new behaviour, culture is a building block that should not be underestimated. It’s not surprising that Peter Drucker is often quoted with “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Hofstede's culture typology helps to gain a quick understanding of both the prevailing and desired culture through five dimensions: (1) small versus large power distance, (2) individual versus collective, (3) masculine versus feminine, (4) low uncertainty avoidance versus high uncertainty avoidance and (5) short-term orientation versus long-term orientation. For the accountancy sector this transition looks as follows.

Elements

From To Structure

Focus on procedures

Hierarchical organisation Data as bycatch

Culture Short term Masculine Individual

Focus on the relationship, with the procedure as the foundation Network organisation Data as a starting point

Long term Feminine and masculine Collective

Methodology Procedure-oriented Accountant Strategy and process-oriented Data interpreter who is also an accountant

By having a clear picture of the history, the desired future and the current and desired rules of the system you have laid the basis for setting up and managing the transition.

Setting up and managing the transition

Working on impact business models requires mobility from organisations. Mobility that is needed to accelerate the intended transition towards the desired future. This is not a question of malleability, but rather of helping to bring about the intended transformation and to manage it. Transition management assumes that a necessary movement will always occur and that you can in fact only accelerate it in the desired direction.

Five levers

To control the mobility of organisations, we distinguish five levers: direction, reputation, relationship, routines and result, which we will explain one by one below. An analogy with the so-called “five-slice pie chart” is appropriate here. Managing a transition requires elements from each part of the “five-slice pie chart” (the levers), so that the transition can continue. Using the Transition Profile below, you can bring into focus the current and desired situation of your transition to an impact business model in a practical manner. For example, use an X for the image of the current situation on a scale of 0 to 5 and a 0 for the desired situation.

Determining the direction

Determining the direction has two points of action, namely determining the direction and implementing the direction, also referred to as strategy realisation. Determining the direction involves having an insight into the developments in the market and society, formulating a vision and mission and converting these into strategic themes that are relevant for the organisation.

Establishing a reputation

Establishing a reputation can give the impression that it primarily concerns the outside of the organisation and is based on slick marketing campaigns, and that is exactly not what we mean. Here too, there are two sides to the coin. Reputation is one side of the coin, with the other side being the organisation's identity. Or as the saying goes: "Starting on the inside is winning on the outside".

Developing relationships

Research into the so-called service profit chain shows that organisations are well advised to put the relationships with employees first, based on the idea that ultimately it is the employees who maintain the contacts with the customer. So doing good for the employee, by definition, means doing good for the customer, according to research by the renowned research agency Gallup and by Aukje Nauta.

Identifying routines

The routines lever also has two perspectives: processes and patterns. Processes are about the actual work processes and the way they are executed within the organisation. It is precisely through the functioning of these processes that it becomes visible whether an intended development or strategic direction is embedded at the level of day-to-day work. Patterns are about ingrained ways of thinking and acting that can impede the realisation of new activities. In the book Fast Strategy (Doz & Kosonen, 2007) these are called "strategic toxics".

Achieving results

The fifth and final lever that applies to transitions is the achievement of results and the method of management and accountability that plays a role in this. Here too, there are two perspectives, namely “focus on indicators” versus complementing “intended effects”. In many organisations, the main focus is on financial indicators; a major step forward would be a more integral focus, for example based on the Business Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as developed by Kaplan and Norton. In view of developments such as the Sustainable Development Goals and frameworks such as the B Corp standard and the Global Reporting Initiative, there is another dimension to the lever of achieving results, namely that organisations are increasingly expected to be transparent about the actual impact they have in ecological, social, societal and economic terms.

11. Take the cha en e

We would SMEs to work together to make regions, countries and the world a better place and to collaborate on “Gross National Consciousness”.

If you are interested in setting up a movement of conscious entrepreneurs in your region who want to work with impact business models, we can give you the following tips.

Tip 1: pt for “it takes one to know one” It is useful and pleasant for entrepreneurs to be able to talk directly to a fellow entrepreneur in the region. So, make sure you know who is working on B Corp and get to know each other so you can easily share experiences.

Tip 2: Combine government, education and doing business Link government, education and business. It is through collaboration that we can make the world a better place. None of these institutions can do this alone. You need to COLLABORATE.

Tip 3: Create a movement, not an organisation

In particular, don't create the next organisation with its requirements. Bring passionate people together and let them create infectious enthusiasm to create a water lily principle. Before you know it, you'll be working with many.

Tip 4: Get in touch!

Contact us if you want to know more, we are happy to share our insights and materials. Let's work together on Gross National Consciousness!

At PrimeGlobal we are stiving to create a movement of next generation accounting firms ready to help business embrace sustainability, for which B Corp principles can be very helpful Contact us if you want to know more at communications@primeglobal.net

12. Pri eG oba Case Studies

Over the following pages we provide case studies of PrimeGlobal member firms, and their clients, who are leading the way with championing sustainability. Our aim is to add to these case studies as more members embrace our goal. For those firms working towards B Corp certification we will create a community group to provide support and encouragement.

We also provide details of resources our strategic partner the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) can provide to help firms, and their clients on their sustainability journey. ACCA’s Certificate in Sustainability for Finance provides comprehensive coverage of sustainability issues. It provides great foundational knowledge for professionals to support their clients.

PrimeGlobal member: Eshuis Accountants en Adviseurs

Location:

The Netherlands

Established 1932, Eshuis Accountants and Consultants has grown into a high-quality accountancy and consultancy organisation. Eshuis has the ambition to be a socio–economic beacon for the region in which they operate. Eshuis embraces sustainability and has made this part of its core strategy since 2015. Eshuis achieved B Corp certification in 2022.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

Our ambition is to help clients become more successful in such a way that they make an impact on the social and economic position of the region, one day at a time. We try to challenge clients to do the right thing with their own business model. In doing so, we seriously stimulate the growth of conscious entrepreneurship.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

We have developed the Eshuis Impact Framework, with a focus on a strategy as the source of inspiration. With the strategy and opportunities as a starting point, we help our clients to organize their sustainable strategy by using the B Corp standard, building the data infrastructure and help them with assurance on the data

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

We continue to keep up to date with new laws and regulations and how we can help our clients navigate these changes. For example, the obligation that offices must have energy label C by January 2023 is a current project for our team. Also, in September 2022 we started a learning community with 15 attendees from 8 organisations who are working together on their sustainable ambitions. And since 2020 we created a movement of entrepreneurs together with Saxion University of Applied Science around the B Corp standard. Since then, we have trained approximately 70 organisations and more than 125 participants in using B Corp as a management system for sustainability.

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

It is our aim to create an unstoppable movement of conscious business and we want accountants to take the lead in this by helping their clients make a start with their sustainability strategy.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc. ?

The Eight Master Lessons of Nature; What Nature Teaches Us About Living well in the World, Gary Ferguson and Prosperity without Growth, Tim Jackson. Because these books are totally different from what is taught on the different MBA courses around the world.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

Working with the B Corp system helps us give substance to our ambition. We combine this with the Sustainable Development Goals as formulated by the UN. We find that the B Corp tool keeps us on our toes. It makes us go the extra mile and it also forces us to make issues such as sustainability as concrete as possible, both for ourselves and for our customers.

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

Based on our experience, we advise that PrimeGlobal members join the movement of impact accountants. And the Eshuis team is pleased to answer your questions on our journey so far!

PrimeGlobal member: Buzzacott

Location: UK

Buzzacott defines themselves by the needs of their clients, large and small and work hard to build and maintain relationships that are personal, collaborative and enduring. The team of over 500 work co-operatively in specialist teams under one roof to tailor-make solutions for clients. Buzzacott always consider their impact on the environment and local community.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

At Buzzacott we aim to incorporate sustainable thinking throughout our business. This starts with a foundation of strong governance and includes our approach to supporting projects in the local community, upskilling and empowering our team members, working to reduce our personal environmental impacts, and considering our responsibilities throughout our supply chain.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

We do not currently offer any specific sustainability services to our clients.

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

There is potential that we will either include assurance and audit options within our current service lines, or that we will open a new service line that specifically looks to cater to clients’ needs in this area. However, this is yet to be confirmed and remains dependent on our current teams having capacity to develop these workstreams.

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

There is a clear link between our goals and our responsibility to do this work ourselves to ensure our integrity as part of our supply chain. We are mindful that our credentials can be scrutinised, as we would do with our own suppliers. A great example of this is with our recent new supplier, Caffe Praego. We opted to work with them because of their robust environmental credentials and brilliant work in the communities local to where they source their coffee.

Further, the skills we have at our disposal, and our responsibility as trusted advisors, means that when the time comes, we are in a strong position to support our current and future clients with their sustainability objectives.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc. ?

Inspiration to promote work in the ESG space comes from so many places. We learn from our peers and hope they will also be inspired by some of our work. Our offices are based in the City of London and adjoin boroughs that house some of most deprived communities in the UK. Maintaining an ongoing awareness of the experiences of people local to us is highly motivating and keeps our focus.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s? We are utilising the B Corp framework to further our understanding of where we can make the most impact on our ESG journey. We’re considering the SDGs alongside this framework, as this helps us to work towards combined global objectives.

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

Take some time to understand what you already do well and where you need to make improvements. There are so many considerations when it comes to ESG that it can feel overwhelming, so being incremental in your approach will help. Don’t wait until tomorrow, start your journey today, even if that’s opening conversations with your key internal stakeholders. And finally, keep your momentum!

PrimeGlobal member: Katz Sapper & Miller (KSM)

Location: United States

Katz, Sapper & Miller (KSM) is a nationally recognized advisory, tax, and audit firm. Through their deep experience across multiple disciplines and industries, they leverage emerging technologies, combined with people’s differing perspectives, ingenuity, and creativity, to help clients solve their most difficult challenges. KSM is committed to a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion because they know collective differences make them better at advising clients, developing employees, and serving their communities.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

SM’s corporate mission is “inspiring great people to do great things.” While we have always promoted green initiatives within our firm (including the development of a Green Committee many years ago), we have not taken this to the next level internally or with clients. Being involved in PrimeGlobal ESR group will help us frame our strategy on sustainability.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

Currently, we do not provide sustainability services to clients. We know it is an important and valuable area and would like to collaborate with others to understand how they are providing value to their clients in this area.

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

We believe consulting and attestation services is an area that could become a material part of our portfolio of services.

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

Our accountants and advisors serve in the role of trusted advisors to our clients. As new challenges and opportunities are presented, we will always strive to do what is best for the client. In the event there is a way to provide value and expertise, we will continue to adapt and form specialization in every practice area we serve.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc. ?

We are inspired by books, movies, podcasts, etc. and are eager to learn from thought leaders and experts. We have associates in the firm with very strong feelings to maintain and promote sustainability in how we live and serve our clients. In addition, our prospects and clients are asking about what we are doing in this area to promote sustainability.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

We are currently not formally working with a standard. As it relates to the five pillars of the B Corp Standard, we have described some brief highlights.

Governance: KSM’s values include unity, nurturing, ingenuity, trust, excellence, and drive.

Workers: KSM employs over 400 full-time employees (including 52 partners) and was formed as an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) on January 1, 2001.

Community: KSM is committed not only to the clients we serve but the community we live in. Community outreach begins with our partners and staff, who dedicate time and resources to hundreds of organizations. Our commitment extends to our employees’ contributions to various charitable organizations as well. For example, under our Time & Talents program, KSM will donate $500 to any not-for-profit organization at which our employees volunteer 24 hours or more of their time during a calendar year.

Environment: KSM strives to minimize the environmental impact of our organization through recycling, the use of technology, etc.

Customers: More than two-thirds of Fortune 1000 companies use a “net promoter score” (NPS) to evaluate client satisfaction. An NPS rating of 50+ is considered excellent, and over 70 is considered world-class. SM’s most recent survey (2022) resulted in a NPS score of 87.

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

Learn as much as you can. This is a growing area of importance (for individual firms) and an opportunity to provide valuable services to clients that will be meaningful to your staff. Staff today are looking for purpose and meaning in their roles beyond providing the services our clients have engaged us for – what a great opportunity to provide those things as we grow to serve clients in new ways.

PrimeGlobal member: Jégard Créatis

Location: France

Founded in 1960, Jégard Créatis is an independent accounting and auditing firm, providing quality services to more than 3,000 clients in France and abroad. Since its creation, Jégard Créatis has developed competencies and partnerships to provide their clients and their leaders with the most appropriate solutions for their development. Jégard Créatis is strongly involved in sustainable initiatives and was the first firm to sign the 'Charter of the Responsible Firm'.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

We are committed to Corporate Social Responsibility. We believe economic models are changing and we must, as chartered accountants, fully understand these changes in order to best adapt the organization of our firms and even more so to continue to advise our clients well. We believe sustainability must be addressed by companies of all sizes.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

We are a member of the UN Global Compact in France. This program has been created by the United Nations to develop sustainable goals in private companies. It is also good practice for us to convince our clients to subscribe to our new sustainable services. For example, we are now an accredited expert of the Global Climate Initiative, an online service to help our clients calculate the level of their greenhouse gas emissions and set up a reduction plan of these emissions. We also provide training to clients on these critical areas.

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

We expect to provide services to help clients monitor the overall impact of sustainability initiatives. We believe it is important to understand the interaction of social and environmental measures. We can also help clients with risk assessment. We hope to provide sustainability assurance services.

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

If accounting firms do not step up, others will, and we will lose a golden opportunity. This is a transformational moment as significant as the digitalization of our firms.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc.)?

We really live in great times and once again our profession can be at the heart of these great industrial revolutions. We are inspired by working with others to rise to these challenges. We are at the beginning of a new dimension of our profession.

Are you working with a standard e.g., B Corp S G’s?

We use the framework developed by the Global Climate Initiative

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

Just being able to do the job is not enough, you need to let clients know you can do the job SMEs do trust their accounting firms but may assume they are not able to help. It is up to firms to step forward and demonstrate they have the skills their clients need.

PrimeGlobal member: InCorp Global Pte Ltd

Location: Singapore

Headquartered in Singapore, InCorp Global is a leading provider of corporate solutions and business advisory, with an established Asia Pacific presence across eight countries, including Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The group services more than 15,000 corporate clients across various industries, including asset/fund managers, as well as family offices.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

At InCorp, we believe Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting is not just a responsibility but an opportunity for companies. It is essential for firms to align their long-term business goals with ESG to maximise gains and minimise new and emerging risks.

Sustainability is a core value at InCorp Global, and we endeavour to build a healthier, more sustainable, and inclusive community.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

At InCorp, we accelerate the business practices in sustainability for our clients across all markets in Asia Pacific in the following areas:

• ESG Adoption to assist our clients strategically adopt ESG, consider the material topics, and comply with global reporting benchmarks that best fit their needs.

• ESG Reporting to assist our clients collect data and prepare reports that comply with global standards and best-fit practices.

• Independent ESG Assurance, such as internal reviews and external assurance to increase stakeholder confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the ESG information disclosed.

• Sustainable Supply Chain to support companies extend their ESG practices to vendors.

• ESG Rating Advisory to assist companies improve their ESG scores for all major ESG rating agencies, such as DJSI, MSCI, GRESB and CRISIL.

• ESG Due Diligence to support impact funds and their asset companies by conducting ESG-based screening of prospective business partners and investment opportunities.

• Decarbonisation Strategy; GHG Accounting and Reporting.

Our ESG initiatives leverage our network to deepen the understanding of environmental, social and governance challenges confronting business leaders today.

To successfully lead through the current environment, business leaders need self-awareness, resiliency and a strong team of business advisors to stay focussed on the external and internal factors that will materially drive or inhibit performance.

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

We plan to offer the following ESG services to clients in the future:

• Sustainable financial advisory and the ability to access different perspectives.

• Sustainability for start-ups and small and medium-sized businesses and a growth mindset.

• Learning and development training courses, virtual webinars, and e-learning videos in collaboration with professional bodies and institutions of higher learning.

In addition, at InCorp we hope to be the voice of our clients and engage with standards setters and regulatory agencies towards sustainable goals that make a positive difference to the world.

What will your

vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

We believe that having practical knowledge on ESG and sustainability has graduated from being merely an added skill to an essential expertise. Financial accountants and advisors are strategically positioned as trusted agents of their clients. They stand to gain exponential benefits by developing internal sustainability capabilities and by offering sustainability accounting and sustainability reporting services to their clients.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc. ?

In this fast-paced global game of change, we remain anchored in our six values-based attributes that make InCorp an inspiring company for our people – a heart for Integrity, a home for Nurturing talent, a team of Cohesive strengths, that takes Ownership, a beacon for Resilience, and a thousand points of light to ignite the passion of our people to be Proficient in their work.

As ofi Annan famously said, “Our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that seems abstract –sustainable development – and turn it into a reality for all the world’s people”.

We are inspired each day by the passion of our people to enable our clients to meet their sustainability agendas successfully.

We believe that a good company is not just determined by its commercial abilities, but one that is responsible and kind.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

We support global standards like B Corp, GRI, TCFD, SDGs as well as country-specific standards like SGX, HKEX, B S , etc. As part of our ESG Adoption services, we conduct a 360⁰ Analysis and a Preparedness Assessment to help our clients understand how ready they are to embark on their ESG journey. Through such in-depth analysis, we propose a recommended standard to the client.

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

At PrimeGlobal, we can go beyond balancing the books and promote green goals and help companies mitigate climate change-related risks. Being stewards of capital and corporate reporting, we play a crucial role in accelerating business practices in sustainability. PrimeGlobal members must be equipped to verify sustainability reporting as more stakeholders and investors adopt environmental, social and financial performance metrics.

PrimeGlobal member: Schneider Downs

Location: North America

As one of the leading regional accounting firms in the United States, Schneider Downs has a client list of powerful Fortune 500 companies, well-established regional businesses, not-for-profits, and exciting start-ups. With industry expertise and extensive knowledge of the risk advisory landscape, the Schneider Downs team is helping organizations prepare for the proposed disclosure requirements and additional ESG-related risks by developing ESG strategy and Framework plans.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainability?

At this point we do not have a mission statement for sustainability overall, but it is something we will consider in the future. However, we do have the following Diversity and Inclusion statement and have developed a D&I team and strategy:

Schneider Downs & Co., Inc. is committed to ensuring diversity in our firm by actively recruiting, hiring, developing, and promoting a diverse group of employees based on individual merit and performance. We seek to create an inclusive environment in which each person is valued as a key component of our culture and a critical factor in our ability to provide quality service to our clients.

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

We are currently limited to validating the completeness and accuracy of ESG reporting

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

We hope to offer Risk assessment, gap assessment, framework adoptions and assurance reporting

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

They should play a vital role in risk assessment, leading practices, and assisting clients to adopt leading frameworks and attestations. Also, they should support the business community in building a more sustainable company and help companies navigate the ESG risks and opportunities

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc. ?

Our culture at Schneider Downs is making clients and our communities better through our CARE factor

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

No

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

We are just getting started so we were hoping to learn from other member firms regarding challenges and opportunities

ACCA member: Profit Impact

Location: UK

Profit impact is a B Corp certified management consulting business guiding small and medium-sized enterprises to a sustainable future, through education and practical support. They provide CPD accredited education, baseline emission calculations, net-zero strategies and B Corp certification guidance to businesses who want decision-making and reporting to consider their triple bottom line impact.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your fir on sustainabi ity?

Our mission is for our customers to manage measure and report their impact on people, the planet and profit

What sustainability services do you provide to your clients?

We provide end-to-end better business education, planning, and integration services to our B2B clients. We support public sector net zero strategy programs and we provide the future of finance education for University academics.

What services do you anticipate may be offered to clients in the future?

As the sustainability agenda becomes mandatory, we believe auditing and verification is an area that will become a material part of our portfolio of services.

What will your vision/goal mean for the role of accountants and advisors?

The goal is for all accountants and advisors to be able to integrate sustainable decision-making and reporting into all the support they give to their clients.

What’s your source of inspiration? book, role model, theory etc.)?

I'm inspired by the many people working in the community who give much of their time to shore up the problems that are created by not considering the long-term impact of our decisions, on society and the planet.

Are you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

I believe the Business Impact Assessment (B Corp) provides an excellent framework to assess your business and the Sustainable Development Goals are perfect for target setting.

What is your advice for other PrimeGlobal members?

Reporting your holistic impact will soon be mandatory - to do a good job will require thinking, planning, and integrating, it's not quick. My advice is to not be overwhelmed with what can seem complex, put one foot forward and start your journey.

Saxion School of Finance and International Business / University of Applied Sciences

Location:

The Netherlands

Aldo van Duivenboden - Co-author of this workbook

Saxion University of Applied Sciences is one of the largest institutions of higher education in the Netherlands, with close to 27,000 students Saxion offers a broad range of courses at various levels. 15% of the student population is international. Courses are related to the domains of business, health, education, social work and technology.

Saxion offers a truly multi-cultural learning experience as we have students from all corners of the world: Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Sudan, Taiwan, Uganda, Vietnam… the list represents an A-Z of 74 nationalities.

What’s the ission state ent or oa of your uni ersity on sustainabi ity?

As a University of Applied Science, we are intertwined with the region. Our education and research are therefore closely connected to the practical challenges of companies, institutions, and civilians. Together we work on co-creating a sustainable future in the region and beyond.

What sustainability courses and research does the university provide?

Contribution to the SDG’s has a high priority on Saxion’s agenda. We consider it our social responsibility to contribute in a positive way to the ecological, economic, and social issues of our time. Saxion has committed itself to them and this is reflected in both our education and research. Students and employees of Saxion are the key to make a huge impact on a sustainable future. In our bachelor and master courses we educate the decision makers of the future and in our part-time school we educate and train professionals who are already active in the professional field.

What courses do you anticipate may be offered to students in the future?

We are convinced that business as usual is not the way to go. We face the disturbing implications of climate change, energy transition, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and the impact this has on business and society. And we face the challenge that we do not have a textbook describing the way to deal with these complex disruptions. This means that we have to create a new way of living and working, and we need all available talent and creativity to make that happen. For Saxion as an educational institute this means that we shift from traditional knowledge transfer to the formation of multidisciplinary learning communities where students, professionals and researchers work together on practical challenges. We believe that learning together, while co-creating a desirable future, is the way we all must go. Exploring new ways instead of repeating business as usual is both a business opportunity and a way to experience a sense of purpose as an individual.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc.)?

Personally, I am inspired by the work of Otto Scharmer and his “Theory U” Scharmer describes the process of transformation of companies and individuals. What strikes me most is that individual people can make the difference! This is a very encouraging message for both young students and professionals. If you and I have an open mind, an open heart and an open will to contribute to a healthy and sustainable world, we are able to transform ourselves, our company, and society!

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

During the B Corp learning session, which were initiated by Mark de Lat from Eshuis Accountants & Advisors and Saxion, we have experienced the practical value of the B Corp framework. The framework gives a solid structure both for educational purposes and for companies who want to improve their performance on sustainable goals.

What is your advice for PrimeGlobal members?

I am convinced that educators, business advisors and finance professionals can and should take a leading role in facilitating these processes of learning and transformation together. Taking the lead in the transformation to sustainable businesses will contribute to a bright future both in terms of business opportunities and in terms of personal satisfaction and meaning.

More than 150.000 companies are working with the B Impact Assessment tool world-wide which means that more than 1 0.000 business executives and students have made the choice to “Be the change you want to see in the world”. I hope many students and professionals will follow this calling and I encourage you to help spread this message of hope and opportunity!

Smyle

Client of PrimeGlobal Member Eshuis

Location: The Netherlands

Start-up Smyle is an innovative, sustainable manufacturer of toothpaste tablets, on a mission to prevent plastic toothpaste tubes from ending up in our oceans and landfills. They want to make plastic-free brushing the new normal in oral care and aim to reduce the waste stream of 20 billion plastic tubes used worldwide each year. Founders Almar, Dennis, and Roger believe that blending sustainability with entrepreneurship is key to a sustainable future for our planet, and their toothpaste tablets play a key role in this. By starting and ending your day with a sustainable habit - brushing your teeth in a sustainable way - other sustainable habits will be reinforced (as scientific research has proven). So brushing your teeth may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it will have a huge impact!

What’s the ission state ent oa of your or anization on sustainabi ity? Why is it re e ant?

We will save 1 billion plastic packages in a 10-year period by providing excellent oral care with no nonsense. This is relevant, as sustainability and using healthy ingredients are not key focus points in the oral care market This has to change.

• 60% of toothpaste contains microplastics (source: Plastic Soup Foundation). In other words, 60% of people brush their teeth twice a day with microplastic from a single-use plastic tube.

• The foam in toothpaste is the same chemical foam used in shampoo, detergents, handsoap etc.

Smyle is natural vegan toothpaste in a tab, packaged in paper sachets, which can be stored in a small cool glass bottle.

How do you see the role of your accountant and advisor and how should they assist you in the field of sustainability?

They should be proactively mentioning new sustainability developments and aid in making our value chain more sustainable where applicable, including certification.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc.

We just can’t stand that businesses are intentionally polluting the world while producing their products. We want to show that you can build value chains that are a force for the better.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

We hope to be B Corp certified by the end of the year.

What’s your ad ice for other co panies?

Don’t accept the old status quo. Future generations will look back and wonder why we did not act earlier.

GadellNet Consulting Services, LLC

Client

of PrimeGlobal member Katz Sapper Miller

Location: United States

What’s the ission state ent oa of your or anization on sustainabi ity? Why is it re e ant?

Our mission has been focused on empowering our clients to be successful in their businesses for the long-term. Our view is technology should be a fundamental enabler of efficiency, competitiveness, and organizational strength. A thread of sustainability is naturally woven into our mission, and ensuring our business, clients, communities, and end users have long-term success navigating external pressures driven by the economics of limited resources, natural disasters, and health-related impacts.

We believe that technology enables all companies to operate in a more sustainable manner. With the right solutions, employees can minimize travel and environmental impact by working closer to their homes. Companies can produce less waste by using digital solutions throughout their workflow. Further, with the right data intelligence, we enable companies to manage their investments in sustainable solutions like solar, wind, and others and validate those investments.

How do you see the role of your accountant and advisor and how should they assist you in the field of sustainability?

We view every business advisor and relationship through a lens of long-term impact, alignment with our values, and ability to maximize our impact. From a financial perspective, our accounting, finance, and tax support should help us plan effective and efficient ways to make these investments and manage costs.

Our job as an advisor is to challenge the status quo – and through both our leadership as a B Corporation, and also as a consultant, to push our clients to understand the impact of their decisions. As more clients move to more environmentally friendly hosted servers, hosted desktops, and other energy-reducing technologies, we prove out that sustainability has positive efficiency and environmental impacts.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc.

Bill Gates’ 2021 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, led to a re-thinking of the different ways businesses and consumers make choices and trade-offs that have direct and indirect impacts on the economies related to scaling the technologies the world needs to address the biggest impacts of climate change.

In addition, the pursuit of B Corp certification partially originated from our former CEO reading Chief Sustainability Offices At Work: How CSOs Build Successful Sustainability and ESG Strategies by Chrissa Pagitsas.

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

We follow the B Corp standard as our baseline for sustainable solutions. Further, we’ve partnered with other B Corporations to provide insight into our environmental footprint, community impact, and other key items to ensure we are not only following B Corp guidelines, but we are lifting fellow organizations with a focus on sustainability.

We’ve enjoyed the communities evolving out of the B Corp and the recognizable standard. Lean on other B Corporations and use the tools in the B Hive to challenge your company. Nearly every investment we made has not only a positive environmental impact but also, has improved our overall company culture (and thus retention and recruiting metrics) by reinforcing that our behaviours are positively impacting the world. So, don’t be afraid to understand that you can be both fiscally responsible and drive towards sustainable change. More importantly, we’ve drawn in new talent that’s passionate about the same things we are.

What’s your ad ice for other co panies?

Vivera

Client of PrimeGlobal Member Eshuis

Location: The Netherlands

More than 30 years ago Vivera started, as part of a meat company, the development of plant based alternatives for meat. What was first a niche market has meanwhile developed into a serious category driven by concerns about climate change, animal welfare and health. Vivera has developed over the years hundreds of plant based recipes using new technologies and R&D insights based on the knowledge of meat structures and taste.

What’s the ission state ent oa of your or anization on sustainability? Why is it relevant?

Creating a better world by making the switch to plant based eating effortless. We inspire the unconscious carnivores and flexitarians to switch to a plant based lifestyle by being better than meat. We believe life is better when you eat open-minded. If you eat open-minded, the switch gives full satisfaction All relevant NGO like UN, WWF support the plant based transitions as one of the most important once to make a structural step towards a more sustainable, healthy and animal friendly society

How do you see the role of your accountant and advisor and how should they assist you in the field of sustainability?

If you want to use your company as a force of good, it can go in many directions because all decisions could have (in the end) an impact on sustainability, health, and/or animal welfare. It’s important not to get lost in legislation, consumer, NGO, workers, society and corporate wishes. Therefore, our accountant or B Corp standard will guide us on how to tackle the most important issues at first and create an action plan for improvement.

What’s your source of inspiration? book ro e ode theory etc.

We use the roadmap of B Corp as the guiding principle combined with our common sense of doing business. We prioritize where we can make the biggest difference in combination with the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD), which will be mandatory in 2025 so this is a framework for the prioritization of our actions

re you workin with a standard e. . B Corp S G’s?

B Corp is leading and the SDG’s are taken for inspiration

What’s your ad ice for other co panies?

Ask inside your organization who wants to contribute to a more sustainable society. Ask in all departments and at all levels throughout the organization who wants to contribute. Start with some highly motivated ambassadors within your organization who are energetic and want to work on these projects. These frontrunners will create success and more people in the organization will want to know how they can contribute as well and be part of the force of good. Make it fun. Share the improvements on a regular basis and use all available communication and touch points within the organization. Focus internally first before going external.

PrimeGlobal Strategic Partner: Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

Founded in 1904, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) is the global professional accountancy body offering the Chartered Certified Accountant qualification (ACCA). It has 241,000 members and 542,000 future members worldwide.

ACCA believes passionately that accountants are in a unique position to make real, impactful change and be at the centre of sustainable development. From reporting on CO2 emissions to measuring social impact, the skills, judgement and all-round, data-informed view of business possessed by professional accountants have a vital role in this effort. ACCA provides extensive resources to support accounting firms and professionals to equip them with the sustainability skills required for the future.

PrimeGlobal has partnered with ACCA as our Environment Social Responsibility advocate providing important resources, tools and thought leadership - https://www.primeglobal.net/acca-partnership.

ACCA’s Certificate in Sustainability for Finance provides comprehensive coverage of sustainability issues and essential understanding of the processes and techniques for collecting, analysing, reporting ESG data; managing risk and impacts; and evaluating value chains, business models and practices. The qualification will help develop capability across accounting firms and their clients. There is a significant discount for PrimeGlobal member firms.

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