How can the community support businesses to improve if there are concerns about their impact?

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Many of you tuned in last week for our Community Q&A with B Lab where we spent an hour answering questions from B Corps in Australia and Aotearoa. We received so many amazing questions in advance, and did our best to cover them all in the session or over email. One of my favourite questions I received was:

How can we as a community support businesses to improve if there are certain concerns we have about their impact?

I loved this question because it captured what B Corp is about: holding businesses accountable to all stakeholders — not just shareholders — and encouraging them to be in constant pursuit of progress. B Corp Certification has never represented perfection, but a measurement of positive impact.

Although we have a formal complaints process, the framing of this question is about working alongside the company rather than approaching critically, cynically, or with the intention to “push them out” of a community that is built on inclusion.

As B Corps, how would you answer this question?

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Hi Kira, thanks for elaborating more on this question. I totally agree with this approach and celebrate that B Corp works this way.

No matter what you do, you create + and - impacts as a business. Imagine the impact the movement could create if we worked with the “worst” companies in the world and turned around their approach? There is no use having a movement that doesn’t interact with the mainstream of business. I don’t want to be part of a movement that becomes an echo chamber. I want to be influencing companies of all sizes, from SMEs to Multinationals, to be improving their practices and transparency.

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