Shared value as a business approach for employee development

Shared value as a business approach is integral in conducting business because it both creates economic value and societal benefit. Businesses create shared value when they can make profit while also meeting important social needs like improving environmental performance, reducing health related problems, improving nutrition, reducing disability among other factors. When businesses create shared value to make profit and meet societal needs. Shared value should not only be thought of in the context of doing more good. It also encompasses aspects of capitalism (Driver, 2011). Capitalism has relegated many important aspects of society like improvement of environmental performance, safety, and focus on the local community to the periphery of the business operations because of a notion that these are social and not business related activities. The shared value concept includes all these social items into capitalism. For profit firms that engage in these social activities stand to gain a lot by making positive impact on societal needs especially when they critically look at what capitalism means. As opposed to corporate social responsibility, that treats doing good as a side activity, the shared value approach puts a little bit of social in the entrepreneurial. This is an innovative use of resources to explore and exploit opportunities that meets social needs in a sustainable manner (Gibson, 2011). Social entrepreneurs in a bid to institutionalize shared value approach in their operations have labored to pick pieces left behind by narrowly defined capitalism. In fact, they are doing the mopping up. This has made others to give social entrepreneurship a narrow view of capitalism. Social entrepreneurs have literally bailed market players out of the problems created by narrow definition of capitalism. Efficacy can be achieved when for profit organizations re-conceive products and markets, redefine productivity in the value chain, and by enabling local cluster development. This can be achieved when these firms critically look at decisions and opportunities through the lens of shared value. This has the advantage of leading to new approaches that generate greater innovation and grown for these firms and for greater good of the entire society where these firms conduct their business opportunities (Holm, 2013).

Shared value is a very relevant in today's business environment where the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities around it are intertwined. Businesses need successful communities to create demand for its products and provide critical public assets. Supportive environment is very critical for success of such companies. The local community depends on the job opportunities as well as wealth creation (Porter & Kramer, 2011). The narrow view of capitalism creates an impression that businesses contribute to society by making a profit, which supports employment, wages, purchases, investments, and taxes.

In order to explore and understand the shared value approach to capitalism and its efficacy in approaching the conduct of business it is imperative that one reads Porter & Kramer's Creating Shared Value in Harvard Business Review where the duo explore key ways in which companies can create shared value opportunities. They also look at shared value with respect to connection between societal and economic progress. Michaela Driver's An Interview with Michael Porter: Social Entrepreneurship and the Transformation of Capitalism is also handy when it comes to conceptualizing shared value. John Holm's Creating Shared Value in Emerging Markets and Paul Gibson's Shared Value are readings that cannot be dispensed with here.