Is there room for a conscious capitalism?

• Autor(a) principal: Pio, Luís Diogo Pereira Ribeiro
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/21757
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Companies have generally looked to have some sort of positive impact on society through their activity. However, most would agree that, when profit is the main concern, that is not always an easy achievement. Most companies develop their more consciously focused activities around philanthropy and help generally comes at a cost. However, is there room for a scenario where both the company operating in a market economy and society profit from capitalist business activity? To find an answer to that question, we first look towards how Corporate Social Responsibility is traditionally developed by companies and the benefits it brings. We arrive at the conclusion that CSR is generally a cost for companies and has very few reasons to be developed other than poor sheer will to help and, thus, could use some reinvisioning more in line with the capitalist ideals, so that the company can profit and have incentive to help and support causes while these causes are also tended to. To this purpose, we aimed to understand the way companies can alternatively look at Corporate Social Responsibility and make it a profitable endeavor while making it so the positive outcomes that stem from CSR better suit the needs of those affected by these programs. We argue that if a company wishes to be more socially conscious and have that represent an increase in profit, they should first look towards socially inclusive business models, where co-creation is key, as a way to lower costs and provide job opportunities for the poor and that these ideals should be considered not only after activity has been established, but from the beginning. Companies may also look towards rethinking the way they measure profit, including people and environment in the equation, while also considering impoverished markets as a potential source of profit, should they aim to act in a more conscious manner. Finally, companies also benefit from being conscious through improving consumer perception, with the ideals of Marketing 3.0 showing that current consumers care about companies who act to help those in need.