Embedding Conscience

This chapter shows how companies can curate and embed conscience in their everyday work. Curation indicates that companies must choose where they are going to focus their resources. Some companies, especially smaller ones, have a very defined purpose and they concentrate on delivering that. For example, Dutch chocolate brand, Tony’s Chocolonely, has a strong social cause which is to make the production of chocolate slave fee, whereas Spanish fashion brand, Ecoalf, is focused on textile innovation and promoting recycling. However, larger companies such as software company, SAP and Unilever, while stressing the centrality of purpose, often align activities with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and try to deliver on a broader range of environmental, social and governance issues not only within the boundaries of their organization, but together with their business-to-business partners and suppliers in their ecosystems. Increasingly, there is an expectation that even if a company is an exemplar in an area such as environmentalism, it should also address other factors, such as racial justice, wellbeing, inequality and, as guest author, Marianne Waite, argues, disability.