In her HBR piece on Peter Drucker’s view on corporate social responsibility, Frances Hesselbein talks about one of America’s preeminent thinkers on corporate performance.
Drucker is clear that “Leaders in every single institution and in every single sector … have two responsibilities. They are responsible and accountable for the performance of their institutions, and that requires them and their institutions to be concentrated, focused, limited. They are responsible also, however, for the community as a whole.”
It raises the question about socially responsible start-up investors, a growing breed around the US led by later generation investors who have already have as many houses and club memberships they can’t use.
What would be the metrics of socially responsible investors? Would they assess benefits, risks, and impact of investments on specific markets in communities? And as profoundly, maybe more profoundly, does the emphasis on markets and not communities preempt the possibility of social responsibility?
