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4. Mission, vision and governance
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:
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.
Impact
esults
Customers
Processes
Learning and growing
Social Ecological
Va ue
Economic Societal
eturn
Pro t
Pro t
Costs Market share
Branches
Va ue proposi on
eliability Total solu on
Main and suppor n processes
H M policy ey processes Finance and IT
Hu an infor a on and or anisa ona capita
Culture Learning and developing Collabora on Data
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
