True Equitable Embodiment

True Equitable Embodiment

We are living through a revolution towards cohesion.

As protesters line the streets of every major city, I can not help but hear the cry for a just and green economy. All over the world, people are looking at the old and stagnant economic system of the past and recognizing the absence of its place in this new normal. This new normal, instead, invites an economy generated by and for the people, and I see humane entrepreneurs as the leaders of this movement.

We are living through a revolution towards cohesion. If we want to set the groundwork for circular systems of growth that uplift the humanity in each individual involved while working to protect the planet, then we might just create a world in which representation, equity, and empathy come naturally to leaders and followers alike. Currently, we are in the preliminary stages of change.

The collective world population is waking up to realize that the injustices that established nations can not go unnoticed and unrepaired. If we think for a moment as if a nation was an enterprise and, further, an entrepreneurial enterprise, what rating of Humane Entrepreneurship would the nation receive? If a country (any country) was an enterprise, would it present IDEAL, MODERATE, NEGATIVE, or HARMFUL Humane Entrepreneurship?

Seeing how the leadership and top managers have established cycles of harm that consider the financial profitability of the company over the well-being, enablement, and empowerment of their employees, it would seem that a country can also demonstrate systems of HARMFUL Humane Entrepreneurship. Typically improvements can not be created in or from a HARMFUL enterprise. Therefore, this points to foundational reforms, or the possible shut down of the company, so that it can rebegin from a healthier, more virtuous start. Within the transition from destroying to recreate, we might seek the HumEnt principles of empathy and equity as our guides to ensuring that the new company created does not repeat the same vicious cycles of the past.

We must emphasize that within every structure of society, and therefore including business, “respect for human dignity demands respect for human freedom.” The theory and practice of Humane Entrepreneurship are built around the notion that human capital, and the humanistic aspect, which is part of all of us, has been directly and indirectly forgotten within our societal practices. We seem to have simply omitted the value of each and every individual human, and instead replaced this value with that of economics. Therefore, we have accidentally turned economics into a destroying force for humane endeavors. However, seen over the past years, and represented mainly by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, entrepreneurs have refound themselves and their ability to uplift both financial and social capital simultaneously. Coupled with the incredible movement happening around the world today, the world might be able to create enough synergy to start anew.

Within this restart, we can then imagine what we might want to include. Understanding the characteristics of humanistic management, empathy is an essential “driving factor for employee engagement and communicative business culture, leading to a better understanding between organizational members and stakeholders.” Let us, for a moment, reverse the experiment above, now magnifying a business to a nation. If within an enterprise, empathy can significantly enhance engagement and communicative culture, imagine the incredible changes that could arrive on the greater scale of a nation, if and when we all decided to value empathy towards ourselves and one another. As empathy is often thought of as the “starting point of design thinking,” it seems perfectly reasonable that this would be a guiding principle in reimagining and reshaping our new nation.

From empathy, comes a movement towards equity. At the firm-level, equity encompasses the “extent to which a company treats individuals in a fair and equal manner.” This essential component to the work and world culture promotes “a sense of proportion,” agreeing that “the outcomes individuals receive should be awarded in proportion to their inputs and outputs” and understanding that not all individuals are starting in the same place because of embedded covert discrimination. In forming companies and nations that work for equitable solutions, we agree to unearth the past that has created these inequalities and the present that continues to recreate them.

Leaders that manifest the principles of Humane Entrepreneurship will undoubtedly feel more guided than others when system shattering moments come about. Humane Entrepreneurs can quickly adapt to the changes by recognizing their role in searching and working towards a more significant upliftment of the humane aspect of life. It is leaders, such as these, who can understand the opportunities in differences and similarities that will and will continue to build a world made for everyone, one flowing virtuously, greeting growth for all.

We are living through a revolution towards cohesion.

Family Business as a Model for Humane Entrepreneurship

Family Business as a Model for Humane Entrepreneurship

Family firms tend to present a deep sense of responsibility for their communities.

Following the full day at the first Virtual Family Business Research and Practice Conference this past week, I have reflected much as to how many family businesses model the key principles found in Humane Entrepreneurship. Borne out of passion and motivated by togetherness, family businesses present quite correctly the ideal of beginning a business in a “virtuous and sustainable integration of Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and HRM, in which successful implementation leads to a beneficial increase in wealth and quality job creation, perpetuated in a continuous cycle.” Humane entrepreneurship centers around the people of business and expects profitability through those people.

Humane Entrepreneurship in Practice

Humane Entrepreneurship in Practice

Consumers are starting to recognize the value of being able to expend their resources while concurrently awakening to the troubles that small businesses globally face.

As the world retreats inward, both business practices and consumer habits have significantly shifted. Consumers are starting to recognize the value of being able to expend their resources while concurrently awakening to the troubles that small businesses globally face. As for businesses, many have also reflected on their values and practices, deciding where to make cuts and how to demonstrate employee-value at this moment. At large, we have all been influenced by this global reset.

Generation Corona

Generation Corona

Collective Culture Born Out of Individual Isolation

After months of shelter-in-place orders as well as even more extended periods of social distancing, the rhetoric surrounding the next steps is widespread. However, the conversations reimagining what our new normal might resemble has transformed from sterile and secluded into collective and social. Potentially borne out of the human spirit’s contrarian nature or, instead, our perspective-shifting solitude, it seems that this natural revolution, or COVID-19, has engaged us in finally seeing the importance of togetherness.

The previous barriers that were so meticulously placed to keep thick walls between the “haves” and “have nots” have metaphorically fallen. With nature as our great equalizer, we are stuck in this natural disaster. However, we have a choice. Do we want to spend all of our resources on rebuilding those walls, making our societies at large vulnerable to future disasters, or can we take this moment and recognize that those barriers need not exist in our world nor our minds. It seems ridiculous that a global pandemic was necessary to shake us out of our hierarchical worldview and realize that this is the moment to break down and reset.
This crisis has wholly changed our ideal present, and its legacy will continue to seep into generational changes in the future. Generation Corona. A group of entrepreneurs who will never look at sanitary mishaps or the absence of safety funds the same way. The next generations of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have been borne into a world in which expectations have no place. For those businesses that will live to see the other side of this pandemic as well as those that will launch following this intense and immediate form of social distancing, nothing currently exhibits normalcy, nor will it in the future.

In examining the 2020 world and future, we must release the mental hold on hazards and challenges, and look instead to growth and prosperity. MSMEs are recognized globally for their contributions to innovation and improvements in economic conditions. Last year, MSMEs most challenging challenge that inhibited their growth was lack of belief. The belief that a person can create something substantial and of importance to economic and social value must be deep to ensure real success. Entrepreneurship’s global trends have steered away from being solely a domain for the rich, well-connected, and gender-specific for years now, and this crisis will only push this trend forward more quickly. This global shock holds the potential to either promote the women, youth, families, and disabled who have transformed their communities and further societies or delay the necessary work of these underrepresented voices. Therefore, both entrepreneurs and their surrounding communities must work to foster the power of belief as a way to energize economies and improve economic situations. In continuing to actively encourage the creation and sustainability of MSMEs, not just the launch of a business, but also its maintenance of an adaptable and vibrant economic ecosystem, the results will involve meaningful impacts as all of us engage our power of belief in individual potential and the creation and sustainability of MSMEs.

The current pandemic has both halted and advanced much sustainable action. The global pause has led to an incredible lessening in atmospheric carbon. However, it has also exacerbated the current inequity and resulting symptoms of hunger, poverty, sexism, and ableism around the world. As MSMEs make up the very economic fabric of communities, reaching many sustainable development goals without even realizing it, they can be used as a measuring stick for progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. MSMEs sit in the unique and vulnerable position to both presents the solutions to the world’s most pressing issues, while also needing an incredible amount of resilience to be able to perform these necessary services. In our time of reflection at home, hopefully, we, as both entrepreneurs and customers, can realign with importance, to create more informed producing and consuming patterns herein out.

In hoping to promote the work of MSMEs and, thus, the advancement of society, we can advocate for balances as the fourth industrial revolution takes life in the new ways that technology interacts with the human body. As this convergence takes place across biological and physical worlds, the working relationships between employees and their employers will most certainly change. Therefore with this paradigm shift, the use of artificial intelligence will potentially eliminate a significant portion of jobs that are currently occupied by humans. Understanding that this shift will completely change the future of work, we must seek equilibrium, meaning that the advent of technology will allow those with creative ideas, people who are not localized to race, class, gender, religion, or region, to restructure the way that people have engaged in work and employment. In this way, we can recenter solving society’s most intractable challenges, while working in tandem with the goals established by the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainability.

Looking to future transitions, our new normal includes the rise to the entrepreneurial city. This global movement, which began in the mid-1990s, spread venture capitalism across the borders of its original home, the United States, and has led to a dramatic rise in global start-up and venture capital activity. If the most innovative and entrepreneurial talents can view their workspace, unconstrained by borders, then America does not have to stand as the only destination for entrepreneurs. This will allow cities to diversify by attracting talent and understanding that capital will follow.

Lastly, it is essential to realize that even before COVID-19, there was a trend to dismantle the status quo. The global pandemic has only enforced this end of normalcy. The current status quo is vulnerable, broken, and unable to provide both strong and weak economies the solutions they need to find profit in their present and future. We can not only think about ways in which disruption and co-working spaces are affecting the economy but instead, we must go further to address human progress and identity. We are currently caught in a battle for acceptance and belonging in this ever-changing society. Let this fight end in peace, the peace necessary for progression and innovation that will allow us to begin building an equitable world.