If you own or manage a family-owned business, you know that being a provider of the goods and/or services you offer to customers is only one of many roles that your company plays in the community. Your business is an employer, a standard bearer, and a community hub, just to name a few. And, you serve these roles for a diverse set of stakeholders (including customers, vendors, charitable organizations, and more) in the context of a societal structure (aka the “social contract”) that is — quite possibly — in the midst of its most profound transformation since the eighteenth century.
What Role Should a Family Business Play in Its Community?
A conversation to have with your family and other stakeholders.
February 06, 2020
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Summary.
The Business Roundtable’s Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, delivered in August 2019, reflected a pronouncement of a new paradigm for business. The signatories, CEOs of some of the most influential companies in the world, declared that “they would commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.” It makes clear: “These modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.” As a family business leader, you must ask: what is your understanding of the “social contract” today, in 2020? How do the family and other stakeholders view the multiple roles of the family business in the community? What is the proper balance of the three sectors? The future of not just your family business, but of society as a whole, is at stake.