Interesting piece in the Guardian about whether ethical businesses can maintain their values and ethos when taken over by a large multinational (i.e. BodyShop and Loreal, Green & Blacks and Cadbury’s). The article, called When big business bites uses Ethical Consumer‘s ratings to argue that ethical credentials can be lost in a global behemoth that encompasses so many different strands, investments, stakeholders and so on. So Body Shop gets a low ‘ethiscore’ not only because it is part of a massive multinational and so forth, but also because Nestle own 26% of it (with all the baggage that brings).
The true test must be in the longer term: can these smaller businesses wield influence and clout from within that can change the culture of the organisations they find themselves in? Probably too early to say. And there should be questions that aren’t framed in simplistic ways: is it better for Green & Blacks to remain small (and beautiful?) or to expand to the point where new organic cocoa and fairtrade plantations are being demanded….already, their Maya Gold bar (the only one in their range that is fairtrade) is struggling to find enough organic/fairtrade beans, at least according to the Cadbury’s guy on Radio 5’s Business programme last weekend.
What is interesting is the convergence that the article ignores. It sees the world in terms of multinational corporates (big, bad and unethical) and small ethical businesses (small, lovely and social). But that is a world that is becoming increasingly blurred, as those more forward thinking organisations are not approaching CSR from a hand-outs/green-wash point of view, but from an "integral to our future" point of view. Unilever, for example, have done work with the Marine Stewardship Council, the recent You Buy U Give scheme for Sport Relief, and Ben & Jerry UK‘s impressive range of social/environmental activities. Not enough for them to be called a social enterprise, but more substantial than the ‘charity of the year’ stuff one sees elsewhere.
And can there ever be a multinational ethical business or social enterprise? Or will scale always end up compromising (or diluting) values, approach and ethical credentials? At least it seems that in the future we will get the chance to find out.
I am very keen to support and promote the smaller ethical businesses that you refer to, however, at a sustainability conference I attended recently many of the big players were in attendance. They are doing some good things, but they do not always promote this as they are concerned that they will be seen to be “green-washing”. Interestingly enough, when questioned as to why they were spending time and effort on sustainability initiatives their responses included that it can generate opportunities and is important to future growth.