So Said Laozi: How Daoism Explains 'Creating Shared Value'

Abstract

In January 2011 Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and his long-time corporate responsibility collaborator Mark Kramer advanced the principle of “Creating Shared Value” (CSV). Heralded as “The Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, CSV promised to transcend the longstanding divide between a company’s pursuit of financial profit and its larger obligations to society. Though the likes of the Clinton Global Initiative have backed CSV, many commentators have criticized it as being either a cherry-picked version of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR), and therefore unoriginal, or simply an unrealistic socio-economic agenda. Daoism, an ancient Chinese wisdom, dispels this latter skepticism by explaining why CSV is possible and how such a change would work in practice. It also shows how CSR, and the economic system upon which it is based, is unsustainable. In the end, Daoism suggests that CSV may even hold the key to returning society to a genuine state of liberty.