Expressing Citizenship

The quality of the relationships changes the quality of the outcomes.

Merely transactional relationships lead to short-term gains but often deplete the socio-economic-ecological context. Mutually considered relationships contribute to strengthening the context and the business.

Citizenship is the relationship of business with its socio-economic-ecological context such as to create regenerative outcomes. This requires a sense of belonging and sense of care within all places: local, global, and virtual; and, it conveys both rights and responsibilities. 

What are the guidelines needed to achieve successful relationships that lead to regenerative outcomes?

Guidelines for Expressing Business Citizenship

Business is a dynamic, evolving, interdependent and creative living-system. It is embedded in its socio-economic-ecological context. To ensure that the quality of its relationships with and within the context produce regenerative outcomes, we have a set of 6 guidelines. These guidelines apply living-systems principles to business relationships.

Two scenarios are useful to keep in mind when understanding these 6 guidelines:

Scenario #1:  A business' relationships with its customers, suppliers, employees, regulators and shareholders. These are the traditional relationship considerations.

Scenario #2:  A business' relationships with the wider socio-economic-ecological context such as the community, the ecology, the built-environment, etc.

1. Interdependence:   Interdependence is the new ‘power’ that we gain as we begin to understand how to operate within an interconnected system. Interdependence is not a constraint that holds us trapped in the system, but a property that frees us to express ourselves within a system of support. 

A business is embedded in its socio-ecological-economic context upon which it depends for its profit, its resources, its employees, its information and its health. The context, in turn, is affected by the activities of the business; it evolves along with the business.

2. Holistic Choice:  Much has been written about the negative side-effects of human actions (specially as related to climate change). Every action is the result of choices that we made. If, at the time of making these choices we broadened our awareness, we would have had the possibility of making different choices. This is ‘holistic choice-making’. 

In nature, we can see that collaboration, with only pockets of competition, is the primary way of functioning. Businesses too can make holistic choices simply by choosing “win-win” rather than “win-lose” choices: the first regenerates, the second degenerates. 

3. Alignment: For too long, business has been operating with war-like strategies: fighting against its context in order to control and force it to achieve its goals. While this approach might work in the short term, it often comes at the expense of business' own survival and creates enormous socio-economic-ecological destruction in the long term. 

One way to visualise the way that the Web of Life functions, is to think of it like an ocean wave. To effectively surf the wave, it is necessary to align with its flow. By aligning with the context, suddenly all things start to work for us, rather than against us.

4. Infinite Possibilities: At the point of choice-making, there is a wide-open field of possibilities; we can say that the potential of that moment is infinite. Yet often, we find ourselves stuck in repeated patterns, unable to see these infinite possibilities. We can learn from research in the fields of innovation and creativity how to access the infinite field of possibilities. Two key findings are (1) non-labeling and (2) contemplation. When observing something, we tend to immediately label it: good or bad, useful or not-useful. This immediate labeling closes the space of possibilities, it reduces the choices available to us. Instead, we can step back into non-label-observation in which we observe without categorisation until the moment of choice-making. This requires an inner capability which we can acquire through the practice of contemplation. 

The need in business for having the capability to observe infinite possibilities cannot be overestimated.

5. Illusion of Control: We do not change a system, the system changes itself; we merely provide the triggers. For example, the smartphone generated enormous business and societal changes, but it was only a trigger. Each part of the business ecosystem and the wider social context adapted and changed based on its own needs and properties. 

So, how do we operate given that we have no control over outcomes? It means living with uncertainty; an idea that is gaining attention in management theory. Businesses need to develop the agility to move with emerging outcomes (predicted or unpredicted). This means becoming learning organisations rather than just ‘doing organisations’. The emphasis shifts from controlling to learning and adapting.

6. Intention: Relationships often originate from the intention to achieve a particular outcome. However, narrow, outcomes-focused intentions limit the possibilities of the relationships. If we understand intention alongside “alignment’, ‘illusion of control’, etc., we can see that intention can instead be the originator of enormous creative possibilities.

Please return to this page as we continue to develop the guidelines for business citizenship.