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Find a B Corp

bcorporation.net

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Re: Find a B Corp

#21

Post by abound »

As another commenter noted, Nespresso is a B Corp [1] and a subsidiary of Nestlé, which isn't traditionally thought of as a particularly "good" company, to put it gently [2].

My opinion of the B Corp designation, which has been heavily colored by founding + running a nonprofit full-time, is that it's mostly a marketing tool, and otherwise doesn't carry much weight. A common context I come across them in is offering services to nonprofits (ex [3] [4]), which they seem to do at approximately market rates in most cases.

In some ways (but certainly not all), I think the 501c3 process/designation puts stronger guardrails in place to make sure an organization isn't doing anything particularly terrible, by 1) limiting the financial upside to doing "bad" things, 2) removing the tax-exempt status if the org deviates too far from their stated mission (filed in a 1023 with the IRS) or receives too much money from the wrong places, and 3) forcing a bit of transparency by publishing 990s (the nonprofit yearly tax filing).

[1] https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/nes...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9#Controversies_and_...

[3] https://www.wholewhale.com/

[4] https://www.fatbeehive.com/

Re: Find a B Corp

#22

Post by wnc3141 »

Many scholars note thay a B-corp is mostly a marketing strategy. There is little in B-corporate status that meaningfully differentiates from a traditional corporation, except to signal to customer and shareholders the intent of the firm to consider total stakeholder value.

https://theconversation.com/b-corp-certification-wont-guaran...

Re: Find a B Corp

#24

Post by tdonoghue »

unmole wrote: post #23

I apologise for a middlebrow dismissal but is there anything more to this than performative virtue signalling?

Yes! There's money to be made in the certification of the performative virtue signaling.

Re: Find a B Corp

#25

Post by [deleted] »

abound wrote: post #21

As another commenter noted, Nespresso is a B Corp [1] and a subsidiary of Nestlé, which isn't traditionally thought of as a particularly "good" company, to put it gently [2]. My opinion of the B Corp designation, which has been heavily colored by founding + running a nonprofit full-time, is that it's mostly a marketing tool, and otherwise doesn't carry much weight. A common context I come across them in is offering s…

[deleted]

Re: Find a B Corp

#26

Post by culi »

unmole wrote: post #23

I apologise for a middlebrow dismissal but is there anything more to this than performative virtue signalling?

I actually kinda find them useful. The overall "B Corp certification" is just too easy to get imo, but they do have detailed breakdowns of scores in each of their 5 categories (Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, Customers). For example, you can look at this company page[0] and see that they don't have worker ownership or bonus points for certain environmental initiatives they take

In short, while the certification might not be the most useful, I think the comparative scores can be. I wonder if anyone's scraped the data already for projects

[0] https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/ple...

Re: Find a B Corp

#27

Post by culi »

msesen wrote: post #3

I've been trying to find a meaningful job at a BCorp or other socially/environmentally responsible company for a while. Sadly, it doesn't seem like you get a lot of chances as a Software Engineer, since most of the corporations just offer services or physical products.

if you haven't already come across it: https://techjobsforgood.com/

Re: Find a B Corp

#28

Post by H8crilA »

I wonder if it works like the ESG scores, where an oil company can score max results because it is ranked against peers, i.e. other oil companies.

Re: Find a B Corp

#29

Post by hugoromano »

I run two SMEs in Tourism, and as their size is small we opted years ago, to spend certification costs into CO2e offsetting. We use United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a pillars for managing.

Re: Find a B Corp

#30

Post by unmole »

culi wrote: post #26
unmole wrote: post #23

I apologise for a middlebrow dismissal but is there anything more to this than performative virtue signalling?

I actually kinda find them useful. The overall "B Corp certification" is just too easy to get imo, but they do have detailed breakdowns of scores in each of their 5 categories (Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, Customers). For example, you can look at this company page[0] and see that they don't have worker ownership or bonus points for certain environmental initiatives they take In short, while the certif…

This looks all too similar to ESG: Taking arbitrary and subjective values and turning them into supposedly objective numbers.
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