Despite their good intentions, today's businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives - to do good and make money simultaneously.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We're making a lot of changes at Gap Inc., but as our Social Responsibility Report demonstrates, doing business the right way is still extremely important to us.
I was given the opportunity to run a business, but on that very same day, I understood that it comes with a lot of responsibility, and responsibility comes at a price.
Business is one of the most powerful institutions on Earth for creating wealth and opportunity and helping to lift people out of poverty. When you think about it that way, then business is not separate from development policy.
There's always something happening in the world that creates an opportunity to try to fix a business and build a business.
Businesses who are members of Businesses for Social Responsibility or the Social Venture Network are internalizing costs on a voluntary basis and therefore raising their costs of doing business, but their competitors are not required to.
The central task for a business is to make a profit. The challenge is to make a profit by doing things which are genuinely good for people and good for societies.
The role of business is to provide products and services that make people's lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.
Business is a very beautiful mechanism to solve problems, but we never use it for that purpose. We only use it to make money. It satisfies our selfish interest but not our collective interest.
I missed so many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes, this is the business I wanted to be a part of'.
Business is not the aim of life; it's a game.