‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ — Is it possible to socialise the economy?

‘Start where you are’

Our economy and financial system is pretty appalling but it’s not going anywhere soon.

Nor is business, property, trade, the stock market, or currency.

It’s all part of one big interconnected system.

It’s all locked together into one huge knotted mass and none of it is built for adaptation or change. It’s been built to generate money and it does this in the most efficient way it can.

It’s really effective at doing this, but it does so at the expense of social, cultural and environmental concerns.

It isn’t concerned about you. It isn’t concerned about society. It isn’t concerned about culture. It eats the environment for breakfast.

It contains within it a set of harmful beliefs, actions, and behaviors. It’s own set of cultural norms which also help to glue it together.

That’s The Economy.

The economy exerts certain effects onto society, culture and the environment.

There is also a Social Economy.

“The social economy is formed by a rich diversity of enterprises and organisations, such as cooperatives, mutuals, associations, foundations, social enterprises and paritarian institutions, sharing common values and features.”

You can consider the Social Economy to be exactly the same as The Economy (in fact it is not isolated and sits within The Economy) except that it has pro-social intent.

It too is successful but not necessarily at the expense of social, cultural and environmental concerns.

It can be concerned about you. It can be concerned about society. It can be concerned about culture. It can be concerned for the environment.

Overall it is a less harmful sector of the economy.

It exerts a more positive effect onto society, culture and the environment.

So it’s Good Guys vs Bad Guys?

Well things are rarely ever that simple and I’m never that easy.

Taking a critical stance it’s possible to see very beneficial aspects within The Economy and Social Economy as well as negative aspects.

I’m not going to pick on The Economy at this point because we already know many of the problems which exist so here’s some questions to ask about the Social Economy.

• Is charity always good? (We know social justice is better!)
• In which economy are some social enterprises? (One foot in? One foot out? Both out?)
• If a foundation reinforces negative social perceptions who wins? Is it them or their beneficiaries?
• If a philanthropic funds executives reward themselves highly but outsource services to minimum wage suppliers what role are they playing in society?
• etc, etc, etc…

Conversely a company operating entirely within The Economy could have; great pay, terms and conditions; low staff turnover; take an interest in local people, the local economy and local affairs; have a highly ethical stance on finance and the environment.

You get my drift of course. Good Guys and Bad Guys it aint.

There is good and bad in both.

Can you socialise an economy?

When we look at the harms which can come from both The Economy and The Social Economy it would be fair to say that some of this is caused by the systems and/or financial infrastructure that we have built.

It is baked in or as you will see an example of later, it exists within sets of nested conditions which prevent easy resolution.

For the purpose of this post I’m going to leave these out of the picture and instead focus on the beliefs, actions and behaviours that we everyday mere mortals can begin to address for ourselves.

Have you ever heard of the term to socialise? Not in the politiical or let’s have a party sense but in the societal/cultural sense.

Socialise — make (someone) behave in a way that is acceptable to their society.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that.

Socialise our economies so that their harmful beliefs, actions and behaviors become minimised and more positive forms take their place.

Well maybe we can.

Maybe we don’t have to ‘make’ anyone do anything either.

The key could be in connecting existing initiatives together.

‘Use what you have’

Have you ever heard of The Living Wage Foundation? They are a charity which use intelligence to work out what should actually be considered to be a living wage for someone.

Businesses and organisations of any kind can sign up to be a Living Wage Employer thus demonstrating their commitment to the quality of life of their staff and their families.

They have been operating since 2011 and since that time they have signed up approximately 6,000 employers.

For comparison there are; 900,000 civil society organisations; 2.5 million businesses; 810 public bodies, agencies, and local authorities; and 11,930 town/parish/community councils in the UK.

Have you ever heard of Disability Confident?

Disability Confident is a government scheme designed to encourage employers to recruit and retain disabled people and those with health conditions.

It was launched 4 years ago.

They have 15,000 organisations signed up.

There are hundreds of such schemes, accreditations and initiatives operating which exist to help organisations to be in effect more social or environmental.

To be more aware of the effect of their practices and decisions on the world, society and the environment and to counteract through their own agency and freewill the potential negative harms that their organisation can cause and instead make a positive contribution to society.

You see that sounds like a processes of socialisation to me. Except they are ‘choosing’ to do it.

But in an overall economy where some actors play fair and some don’t, it can make it very difficult to do the right thing.

Governments also are caught in a predicament.

The international financial system creates an effect whereby any pro-social decisions national governments take can be seen as economically weakening and lead to a lower rating on international markets.

This is something governments are rightly concerned about.

But how do we get every organisation signed up to these initiatives without government? Look above again and you’ll see this is the wrong question…

So what can we do?

‘Do what you can’

At Socially Enterprising we don’t just consider people and communities applying their creativity and resourcefulness towards benefiting society to be examples of ‘socially enterprising’ behaviour.

We also believe that employers and organisations which adopt pro-social practices to be part of the Socially Enterprising story as these actions benefit society overall — they too are being ‘socially enterprising’.

Our platform and approach brings communities, civil society, business and the state together into one place.

We also bring all of these great schemes, initiatives and the organisations which support them into the eco-system too.

We promote positive actions by companies, provide connections to help and assistance, and encourage organisations to work together and support each other.

We don’t ‘socialise’ anyone!

We encourage organisations to do what they can.

We create the conditions for organisations to freely take steps that will have a benefit to society, culture or the environment and by doing so they improve the conditions within society and the entire economy.

It’s always a move in the right direction.

Intelligent Economy— Where social meets enterprise

Above I have introduced you to one of the ways in which Socially Enterprising’s potential can be realised very quickly.

I would now like to move you forward several years.

We can bring together the data on which companies have done what and what they are doing now.

We might connect into data held by the organisations which support the initiatives and accreditations or by the companies reporting on their own efforts.

Maybe we bring in data on supply chains and terms and conditions.

We create a view of the actors in the economy which does not exist today.

Good Guys and Bad Guys it isn’t.

But it changes our ability to understand the effects of organisations on our society and economy. We can in effect can act more intelligently with this deeper understanding.

Instead of picturing ‘The Economy’ and the ‘Social Economy’ as rough polarities we would be able to see the actual economical, social, and environmental effects both locally and nationally of each actor within the system.

This intelligence is useful to a society which needs to change it’s practices to meet the challenges ahead and it’s a tool that can enable government to support those efforts.

This sort of intelligence comes into it’s own when combined with other forms of intelligence and governmental system. ESCO would be one example which comes to mind.

ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations.

It isn’t difficult to see how the two would fit together into a larger system of identifying and anticipating skills and deficits within the economy or even driving economical activity and investment.

Socially Enterprising isn’t only about the social, cultural and environmental aspects of society.

It is just as as focused on bringing benefits to the economy and enterprise too.

It’s a very different world that we are heading into.

Navigating it comes naturally to us and we’d like to create a north star, a vessel, and a sea of intelligence that can guide and assist others in the challenging but exciting times to come.

We have the story and the strategy ready to go.

We are looking for the crew.