Creating Shared Value

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In "Creating Shared Value" (Porter & Kramer, 2011), a business article published in the Harvard Business Review in 2011, the authors Michael Porter and Mark Kramer put together a very compelling case for changing the way one looks at corporations and how they operate. Specifically, the article focuses on corporations and big business and their relationships with governments and the social environments in which they function. The author's assessment in this article is that corporations have developed a "contemporary, narrowed, capitalistic conception" which has reduced the trust that people have in businesses. It is because of this narrow minded capitalistic conception that many societal, environmental, and economic problems now exist globally (Porter & Kramer, 2011).

Porter and Kramer evaluate the neoclassical view that indicates that social responsibility is a nuisance that drives up costs for corporations and that their doing business as normal and producing goods and services resulting in economic successes should suffice (Porter & Kramer, 2011). However, Porter and Kramer take this viewpoint to task citing research that suggests that the relationship between a corporations success is directly related to that company's relationship with their community. In other words, a good relationship or good corporate citizen equals higher profits, not the other way around where companies try to increase productivity through reductions in force and cutting of costs that hurt their communities (Porter & Kramer, 2011).

The article demonstrates how companies need community support just as communities need the companies support. Porter & Kramer expand on this principle by demonstrating in their research how companies have developed many "corporate social responsibility" types of programs that have no industrial or ...