World Forum for Ethics in Business

In recent years, business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of not just the global economic crisis but also major social and environmental problems. This calls into question the traditional paradigm of business under which companies have continued to view value creation narrowly, optimizing short-term profits in a bubble while ignoring the most important societal problems that are critical for their longer-term success.

A false dichotomy has been set up wherein companies should only be interested in short-term profits while governments need to tackle social problems. We need a new paradigm for business wherein businesses generate economic value by tackling society’s major needs and problems such as health, education and environmental degradation as a core value proposition.

This broader notion of shared value can reshape the relationship of business to society and can legitimize business as a central partner in tackling society’s problems.