Trigger 2

Problem:
The role of business in solving social problems

Learning Objectives:
How a company should choose which social problems to address?
The ways companies profit from solving social issues?
Examples of companies successfully solving social issues?

Keywords:
Profit, social responsibility, fair trade, shared value

How a company should choose which social problems to address?

Something that is in your area of business. Maybe try to find something that affects your community. 

The ways companies profit from solving social issues?

If a company would invest in the health and wellbeing of their employees, the same employees wouldn't be as sick resulting in less sick days as well as making the employees more proactive. When a company makes environmentally sustainable choices, they benefit from it with good press release. (Global Citizen, 2018.)

Energy efficiency, poverty reduction and access to healthcare, are profitable, since they offer business opportunities (Korngold, A. 7.1.2014).

Multinational corporations can reduce their costs, mitigate risks and increase their profit, by finding solutions to the world's social problems. It might be that only the global companies have the resources, international footprint and financial incentives to create a process where they'd address problems like poverty, income inequity, climate change, healthcare and human rights, etc. What the companies that has been leading the way in solving global problems, has been doing that has been success factors for them are e.g. effective corporate board governance, stakeholder engagement and collaboration with other companies and nonprofits. (Alice Korngold, 10.2.2014.)

• People want to support a company that wants to help the world, now a days people care and know more about the problems in the world. People look more into a company, if they are socially responsible, and might avoid a company that is harming the world/not doing anything good for it, and support a company that does. 

Examples of companies successfully solving social issues?

Sources:

Global Citizen, 2018. Solving social issues = good business. URL: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/solving-social-issues-good-business/ Accessed: 3.4.2018. 

Korngold, A. 7.1.2014. Businesses can do what governments can't: solve the worlds biggest problems. The Guardian. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/business-government-world-problems-davos-multinational Accessed: 3.4.2018.

Korngold, A. 10.2.2014. How companies profit by solving global problems. URL: https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/02/10/how-companies-profit-solving-global-problems Accessed: 3.4.2018.