 So what do I think the role of business in society is I have my own view Which is and maybe it's what I want business in society to be but I but I know I actually think business is a Is an agent of development in society which is not what What a lot of people might say I think it means different things to different people. I think it can Benefit a lot of people But I think it can also hurt a lot of people it can benefit its owners its customers Society at large, but it can also damage those people and it can damage its own Owners I guess as well for me. It's what business is for what it does and then the manner in which it does it so it can do it well it can do it in a way that Makes people's lives better, and it can do it in a way that hurts people or hurts the environment it can do it I Guess you could say nicely and it can do it sort of brutally and callously I Tend to focus on on on the company, which isn't every aspect of business But if we look at if we look at say the history of the company and and that goes right back to To Roman times or even or even before we've had companies groups of people we share a mission to do something and Companies originally were it's changed over time rich companies originally were very much more quite often agents of state to do things like build housing Have you know it gets social projects done? and Then very much sort of private businesses I'm kind of a Also interested in if you look back at things like the East India Company or the Dutch That was a British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company Which became massive companies actually sort of embarked on state enterprises overseas sometimes very brutally but of huge profit to to their home countries and it wasn't until we Incorporated companies in the mid 19th centuries around the 1850s 1860s and we gave them this privilege of limited liability That went on in the UK in particular, but also in different parts of the States It was a state-by-state thing in the US And The joint stock company came about that we started to grow something that looks like the the modern company But if you look also at things like the Quaker companies in Victoria in Britain and in America companies like Western Union or the chocolate from the chocolate companies like Cadbury's or Clark's shoes that had a social mission they They chose what they Embarked upon they chose the businesses. They wouldn't do certain types of business. They chose their businesses they also Benefited their employees. They built social housing. They built schools and they saw their mission as a societal mission They made money, but they and many of those companies exist now. They've been long-term companies But for me something particularly changed in the 1980s With a sort of sharpening of the of the purpose of a company being about almost entirely being about profit relatively short-term profit so shareholder value and People often say shareholder value is long-term, but actually companies tend to be measured on a quarterly basis That we for me we we lost any broader purpose. I certainly think expectations have changed. I Think it's an interesting question is whether how much companies have changed in in response to that how much of it is Defense reputational defense what you might call Band-Aid Type activities and how much is fundamental changes in in mission, but I think companies now so all companies 20 years ago Belonged to a coalition that tried to stop any action on climate change and that changed in the 1990s and All companies some of the leading all companies now amongst the people calling for carbon Taxations or carbon trading systems And that's partly because society expects them to deal with their products. I think lots of companies now are dealing with things That 20 years ago. They wouldn't have seen on their radar freedom of expression for Google and yahoo or water usage for Coca-Cola, and it's not just business. It is also about societal expectations, but I'm not sure If you dig deep whether that those companies see their purpose It's changing. I think they see this as we need to do this in order to enable our purpose Which is shareholder value. There are some companies that have always Hewlett-Packard maybe is one who always expressed a social mission rather than than a than simply a Profit mission so a company shareholder value is simply two things the dividend stream and the share price So you're driven to one make profit Quarterly because dividends are played paid quarterly and and to drive up your share price often by making your company bigger or by Upgrading the assets of it But it's interesting. I mean, it's often quoting over Paul Pullman at Unilever has said He doesn't want you leave it to report quarterly and he's also said that he doesn't get up in the morning I'm paraphrasing. I think in order to increase shareholder value. He gets up because he wants to satisfy his customers. I Might ask for a broader social mission than that, but it's still not a short-term mission So one of the things that I think We don't really explore enough and think about enough is Although it's coming out right now because of people's concern with tax avoidance in particular is whether businesses benefit societies particularly in the places that they operate So the ability of a business a global multinational business at least now to move its profits around through internal pricing systems into different tax regimes Can mean that the place where the business is done doesn't always benefit from the business and you couple that with with what's happened in Recent years particularly without sourcing and particularly with sourcing from poorer countries that businesses go to a place Bangladesh is a recent example where the garment factory collapsed And we've had fires in garment factories in parts of the world as well recently and they go to a place, which has weak capacity and and What goes with weak capacity is low wages and that's why they're there they're there because it's it's low wages But it also means is weak capacity and that means there aren't there isn't much in the way of government standards on for example building Regulations for factories or inspectors to inspect them or even the ability to inspect them So a country like Bangladesh, which has a GDP per capita of six seven hundred dollars The government doesn't have the capacity to put that in place and we have a tendency To then say that when the factory collapses that why isn't the government of Bangladesh doing enough to maintain standards It doesn't have the ability to do so and that's why the business is there and it's making Taking advantage of a weakness in capacity and not contributing to it So I think there's something about contributing to the place You're in I Think the various stakeholder approaches that that have emerged in the last 15 years or so Take us some of the way that a business It's not just and in some ways what that does is it looks at what other people value so if you Are concerned as a business about what your customers value what your employees value which may be time at home with their children or what The society in which you operate values, which may be environment. It may be peace. It may be stability may be A whole range of things Then I think that starts to get you into Into a business operating behaving in a different way They don't exist in law of course. We still have the legal construct Which is that the companies a limited liability companies Responsibilities are towards its owners pretty much