Beyond the Bottom Line

In case studies from six countries, Quarter, a professor at the University of Toronto, examines the practices of eleven business owners who use their firms as laboratories for social innnovation. The people in this group, he writes, "are not only business entrepreneurs, but social entrepreneurs—that is, innovators and social risk-takers who devote themselves and their businesses to achieving and promoting their ideals." Quarter divides the cases into two groups: those who transform the nature of the firm through innovative ownership and decision-making strategies; and those who are focused on changing the relationship between the firm and the surrounding community. "The contributions of the businesspeople discussed in this book are noteworthy in their own right," he writes. "But given the temper of our times in which crass self-interest is seen as a virtue and in which many businesspeople are accumulating vast amounts of wealth with little or no concern for the social consequences of their actions, the phenomenon is of even greater significance."