I'm involved with an organization called Entrepreneur's Foundation, which is a consortium of 100-odd private and public companies in Silicon Valley that have made community involvement a tenet of their corporate values. Homestead has been a member for a long time, and for the past few years I've been involved as an advocate, fundraiser and member of their steering committee. At Stanford recently, EF lead a roundtable discussion on Corporate Citizenship, and the keynote speaker was a professor named Noel Tichy, from the University of Michigan biz school. He gave an interesting, and for-the-most-part engaging talk on what it means for corporations to go good citizens.
If you ask me, Dr. Tichy doesn't go far enough. He's basically saying that the largest corporations in America that have created hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth (mostly for their key employees, themselves, and their early shareholders) are obligated to be concerned wtih the global issues of poverty, education, human rights, etc. because it is the right thing to do, but it also is good leadership and contributes to the bottom line.
I say that that corporations of all sizes have a social obligation to give back to the community, because corporations are our society's major source of both wealth creation and social change. I'll write more on this later, but if you want to learn more about an organization that believes companies of all sizes have the power (and responsibility) to make a difference, check out the website for Entrepreneur's Foundation (full disclosure, I'm on their Steering Committee).
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