Shared value as a business approach is integral in conducting business because it both creates economic value and societal benefit. Businesses create shared value when they can make profit while also meeting important social needs like improving environmental performance, reducing health related problems, improving nutrition, reducing disability among other factors. When businesses create shared value to make profit and meet societal needs. Shared value should not only be thought of in the context of doing more good. It also encompasses aspects of capitalism (Driver, 2011). Capitalism has relegated many important aspects of society like improvement of environmental performance, safety, and focus on the local community to the periphery of the business operations because of a notion that these are social and not business related activities. The shared value concept includes all these social items into capitalism. For profit firms that engage in these social activities stand to gain a lot by making positive impact on societal needs especially when they critically...
As opposed to corporate social responsibility, that treats doing good as a side activity, the shared value approach puts a little bit of social in the entrepreneurial. This is an innovative use of resources to explore and exploit opportunities that meets social needs in a sustainable manner (Gibson, 2011). Social entrepreneurs in a bid to institutionalize shared value approach in their operations have labored to pick pieces left behind by narrowly defined capitalism. In fact, they are doing the mopping up. This has made others to give social entrepreneurship a narrow view of capitalism. Social entrepreneurs have literally bailed market players out of the problems created by narrow definition of capitalism. Efficacy can be achieved when for profit organizations re-conceive products and markets, redefine productivity in the value chain, and by enabling local cluster development. This can be achieved when these firms critically look at decisions and opportunities through the lens of shared value. This has the advantage of…
