Social enterprises, which pursue ethical goals as well as profits, are the modern equivalent of the older philanthropic business movement led by Quakers of which Cadbury was a part.

Appropriately, Cadbury even bought a social enterprise - Green & Black's, the fair-trade chocolate brand - for a rumoured *20m in 2005.

Rod Schwartz, who runs the ClearlySo social business website, says: "The whole social enterprise movement owes its intellectual history in the UK to the Quakers." Mr Schwartz, a former investment banker, sees ethical business movements as a reaction to the excesses of capitalism. He says: "Back then it was dark satanic mills, now it is bonuses in the City." Argument is raging in the social business sector as to whether Kraft will dispense with Cadbury's extensive fair-trade commitments, a plot that Kraft wearily denies.

The fuss highlights the fact that relations between the social enterprise movement and mainstream business are often uneasy. Typically, social entrepreneurs are at least as interested in ethical goals as they are in making money.

Really enjoyed this bit in the Financial Times on social enterprise and its odd relationship with both traditional businesses and existing forms of incorporating. (ht: Rodney Schwartz - @rodneyschwartz)

Reminds me a lot of a recent Social Earth post of mine (here), which also discussed the Kraft-Cadbury deal. My post was written after Cadbury rejected the initial offer, and I fooled myself into thinking that they would continue to fight a Kraft takeover on the basis of cultural differences. (There is a nice BBC article on Cadbury's heritage here. ht: @nlw of change.org.)

Unfortunately, Cadbury ceded after Kraft sweetened the deal, marking a sad day for social enterprise.

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows an office worker slumped against the wall, clutching his chest. As worried colleagues rush to aid the stricken employee, he mumbles: “Don’t worry, it was just a fleeting sense of purpose.”

[...]

Here’s an experiment for you. Pull together your company’s latest annual report, its mission statement, and your CEOs last few blog posts. Read through these documents and note the key phrases. Make a list of oft-repeated words. Now do a little content analysis. What are the goals and ideas that get a lot of airtime in your company? It’s probably notions like superiority, advantage, leadership, differentiation, value, focus, discipline, accountability, and efficiency. Nothing wrong with this, but do these goals quicken your pulse? Do they speak to your heart? Are they “good” in any cosmic sense?

Now think about Michelangelo, Galileo, Jefferson, Gandhi, William Wilberforce. Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa. What were the ideals that inspired these individuals to acts of greatness? Was it anything on your list of commercial values? Probably not. Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor.

I talk to a lot of CEOs, and every one professes a commitment to building a “high performance” organization—but is this really possible if the core values of the corporation are venal rather than venerable? I think not. And that’s why humanizing the language and practice of management is a business imperative (as well as a moral duty).

A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. In so doing, it transforms great talent into exceptional accomplishment. That’s a fact—and it leaves me wondering: Why are words like “love,” “devotion” and “honor” so seldom heard within the halls of corporate-dom? Why are the ideals that matter most to human beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?

[...]

Why is it that managers are so willing to acknowledge the idea of a company dedicated to timeless human values and yet so unwilling to become practical advocates for those values within their own organizations? I have a hunch. I think corporate life is so manifestly inhuman—so mechanical, mundane and materialistic—that any attempt to inject a spiritual note into the overtly secular proceedings just feels wildly out of place—the workplace equivalent of reading a Bible in a brothel.

[...]

Every organization is “values-driven.” The only question is, what values are in the driver’s seat?

[...]

Which brings me back to my worry. Given all this, why is the language of business so sterile, so uninspiring and so relentlessly banal? Is it because business is the province of engineers and economists rather than artists and theologians? Is it because the emphasis on rationality and pragmatism squashes idealism? I’m not sure. But I know this—customers, investors, taxpayers and policymakers believe there’s a hole in the soul of business. The only way for managers to change this fact, and regain the moral high ground, is to embrace what Socrates called the good, the just and the beautiful.

So many fantastic bits of wisdom in this one post. Awesome.

Some similar thoughts in a SocialEarth.org post here.