Corporate Social Capital Debuts

We’re beginning to see social capital redefined as an attribute of corporations in addition to the more common use in describing society at an individual level. At the same time, good will, an imprecise corporate attribute is still very much in use but it’s entirely possible that corporate social capital could come to replace it.

Individual social capital can be brought down to the idea of paying it forward, doing something kind for someone else with no expectation of payback. For example, simple courtesies like yielding in traffic might qualify or holding a door for a stranger. Such things don’t scale up on a corporate basis, though.

Corporate social capital became an almost necessary idea with the introduction of another concept, Stakeholder Capitalism. Meant to replace the older concept of shareholder capitalism, stakeholder capitalism is a broader idea. In the new scheme all shareholders are stakeholders but so are employees, customers, partners and local communities. In contrast, Shareholder capitalism looked no further than the owners of a company’s stock to justify a corporation’s actions and existence.

Stakeholder Capitalism is an ascendant, though not yet dominant, concept and the emergence of associated ideas like Corporate Social Capital[1] points in the same direction as other changes now taking place.