Redirecting Business Performance - The Blog Series to Date and the Next Phase

Introduction

The first set of blogs in the Redirecting Business Performance series has made a powerful case for why and how businesses should promote and measure corporate purposes that solve problems and create human and natural world flourishing and wellbeing.

The first part of the series has therefore focused on how to bring the quest for profit into closer alignment with social and environmental well-being.

The next part will address how to change the operating system of business to avoid social and environmental harm arising from the pursuit of profit.

Overview of the Series

The series, launched by Colin Mayer and Dennis Snower, seeks to:

• Spark debate and propose pathways by which business goals of financial profit can be aligned with broader societal and environmental goals (human flourishing, environmental sustainability).
• Address the “decoupling” of business success from social and environmental progress.
• Explore how policy, governance, accounting, and corporate models can be reframed so that “profit without harm” becomes feasible.
• Invite contributions from academia, business, civil society, and policymaking circles to identify obstacles, propose reforms, metrics, and pathways for diverse contexts.

Thematic Insights and Cross-Cutting Issues

• Reframing value and performance:
  Business success must be redefined beyond financial metrics to include social, environmental, and human aspects.
• Internalizing externalities:
  Firms should become accountable for the full consequences of their actions by converting external costs into internal responsibilities.
• Bridging measurement, accounting, and strategy:
  Concepts like impact accounting and dual-value frameworks (value to business / value to society) can operationalize alignment.
• Governance and incentive structures:
  Aligning business with social purpose requires governance architectures, ownership models, disclosures, and incentives that enable and reward such alignment.
• Context sensitivity and plural pathways:
  Solutions must consider diverse industries, geographies, and cultural contexts.
• Tensions and trade-offs:
  The series acknowledges conflicts between profit and purpose and explores how systems can be reformed to manage them.

The Next Phase of Blogs

The series has established the rationale and urgency of aligning business profit with social and ecological benefit. It has also explored how environmental and social interests can be brought closer to financial ones.

However, it has not yet provided clear guidance on how to prevent profiting from harm to society or the environment.

This issue is complex for several reasons:
1. Defining “harm” is not straightforward—it can vary by perspective and context.
2. Profit incentives can drive firms to engage in harmful practices despite reputational or regulatory risks.
3. Firms that wish to avoid harm may struggle to compete with those that do not—creating a “race to the bottom.”

Thus, the next phase will ask: What can be done to encourage companies and investors to adopt a principle of “profit without harm”?

This cannot be solved simply by monetizing detriments or regulating to prevent them. Both approaches lack sufficient consensus and can face resistance.

Instead, what is needed is organizational, institutional, and system design that aligns intrinsic interests—individually and collectively—in promoting human, social, and ecological flourishing.

The key question, therefore, is: How can the concept of profiting without harm be embodied within business itself, rather than imposed externally through regulation or taxation?