In April 2022, streaming entertainment company Netflix lost customers for the first time in more than 10 years. Once a first mover in the streaming landscape, Netflix was facing competition from Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and others. A key component of Netflix’s prior success was its unique “freedom and responsibility” culture, in which the company eschewed hierarchical decision-making, performance reviews, and vacation and expense policies, and employees were expected to maintain high performance or else get cut from the “dream team.” While some employees reported appreciation for Netflix’s culture, others described it as “cutthroat.” Given the company’s performance in spring 2022, was Netflix’s “no rules rules” culture still an asset or was it now a liability?
Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should business leaders play a role in solving society’s problems? For decades, CEOs have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. But consensus is growing that companies―and their leaders―must engage with their social, political, and environmental contexts. Jones distinguishes deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, from corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. Deeply Responsible Business provides a historical perspective on the social responsibility of business, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene and carrying us through to impact investing and the B-corps. Jones profiles exemplary business leaders from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes. The business leaders profiled in this book were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes driven by faith. They chose to operate in socially productive fields, interacted with humility with stakeholders, and felt a duty to support their communities. While far from perfect, each one showed that profit and purpose could be reconciled. Many of their businesses were wildly successful―though financial success was not their only metric of achievement. As many companies seek to coopt more ethically sensitized consumers, Jones gives us a new perspective to tackle tough questions and envisions a future in which companies and entrepreneurs can play a key role in healing our communities and protecting the natural world.
In May 2022, Roche Group, one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, hosted its first ESG investor event focused exclusively on its efforts to impact access to healthcare. While Roche had recently set an ambitious goal to double the number of patients that had access to its innovative medicines and diagnostic solutions within ten years, it was not at all clear how the firm should structure its resource allocation criteria, performance evaluations, reporting and incentive systems to align efforts internally toward these goals. Group CFO and CIO Alan Hippe was presented with two options, none of which he was particularly enthusiastic about. One was to lower the hurdle rate for projects related to ESG issues, thus relaxing profit expectations. The alternative was to incorporate a set of minimum ESG requirements in all of Roche’s new project proposals. In this case, however, the risk was to reduce the focus on ESG from a strategic priority to a compliance exercise. In the presentation shared with investors at the ESG event, access to healthcare had been positioned as Roche’s greatest contribution to society. This type of public commitment required more than a compliance-level of effort. In September, Alan Hippe would sit down with the executive committee to chart a path for integrating ESG issues into Roche’s project selection and business planning. Hippe went on to define three objectives for ESG at Roche, “we need to align on targets, we need to get resource allocation right, and we need to report both internally and externally.”
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Maria Fernanda Miguel is the Christopher P. Torto Executive Director for the Latin America Research Center (LARC). Her responsibilities include leading research activities for the LATAM region, and providing programmatic support to different areas of HBS including admissions, executive education, and immersion programs. Fernanda is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Fernanda was a Senior Director and Leader for LATAM Business Development at Merck and senior consultant at McKinsey & Co., serving as global Practice Manager for the Business Technology Office Health Care Practice.
She holds a degree in economics from the Argentine Catholic University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Master of Research from University of Bath.
Fernanda has been very active in non-profit activities, including fund rising at the Fundación Acción Hemato-oncologica – Argentine National Academy of Medicine, and acting as advisor to the Board of Directors of the Hospital Garrahan.