Doing Well By Doing Good

If you searched Google right now for "spirituality in business" you might think it has become the hot topic. However, the now popular mantra, doing well by doing good, is at least 200 years old. Capitalist business theorists and practitioners have been thinking about spirit for at least that long.

Its antecedents go back to the 18th century and Adam Smith, a moral philosopher who wrote about the ethics of economics (The Wealth of Nations published in 1776, but more importantly, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759). Smith's Invisible Hand is a close cousin of the conscience in that enlightened self-interest drives the marketplace as we seek to maximize individual return but only while being mindful of the interconnectedness of others in that market.

We see business ethics in the news again in the 1970s when the Corporate Social Responsibility movement was in full flower. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development defined corporate social responsibility as:

the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.

Here, advocates were not interested in doing right for its intrinsic value to the soul. Doing good leads to doing well. (For more on the movement, see Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative web page http://bit.ly/Zf77).

As companies pursued the concept of corporate social responsibility, it became obvious to some that a corporation is like an individual in that it is a citizen and therefore woven into the fabric of community life at both neighborhood and national levels. Implementing the notion of corporate citizenship has become increasingly sophisticated in the last 30 years to the point of moving out of the executive suite and into the workhorse of any business, its marketing department.

Cause-related marketing is defined as promoting a link between commercial and nonprofit businesses to the benefit of both. Historians point to American Express in the early 1980s as the strategy's progenitor. The Company nearly doubled its number of cardholders and increased overall card usage by almost a third by promising to donate a penny to the Statue of Liberty restoration project every time a cardholder made a purchase. This is a direct causal connection from doing good (restoring Lady Liberty) to doing well (100% market share increase at the cost of a cent per transaction).

Next: the spiritual element of marketing strategy