Collective Flourishing

What this business imperative really means

I can’t seem to get off the topic of human flourishing right now!

Later this month I have an engagement (speech, extended Q&A, and two workshops) with the Design Center of the Philippines, whose event centers on collective flourishing. How beautiful!

In an earlier post based on chapter 2 of the book I wrote how

Fostering human flourishing, lying at the heart of the spheres of transformation, is the true purpose of business, it’s raison d’être.

And here is the way my friend Kevin Dulle illustrates this for me:

The figure shows that as its reason for existence, fostering human flourishing underlies all business. Building on that foundation, every individual enterprise should have its own meaningful purpose that expresses its intention in the world and why it exists as a business beyond making a buck. I write about that in chapter 5 of the book where I reprise the five design principles of THEMEing from The Experience Economy, as the purpose of an enterprise is a higher level of theme (a “meta-theme”) expressing its intention. (If you’d like to learn more, the post Being Intentional includes six principles for how the meaningful purpose should “be declared, promulgated, upheld, and lived”.)

As the foundation of business, fostering human flourishing is not a social responsibility; it’s a business imperative. It is core to why businesses exist at all, from time immemorial. Period.

Part and parcel of helping people flourish as an enterprise is working to help your employees flourish, from frontline workers to professionals, managers, executives, and the C-suite. Employees should never be treated as mere means to an end; as human beings, they are always ends in and of themselves. Employment with you is the means to the end of their own flourishing, as they simultaneously help you foster the flourishing of your customers.

Employment with you is the means to the end of your employees’ own flourishing

As seen below in a build to the slide above, fostering human flourishing extends to the communities in which you reside – your existence should be to the community’s betterment, never its detriment. It extends further to society overall, the social order in which you are incorporated, for which your enterprise should be a net positive, not a negative. (And it really shouldn’t be a close call.) Moreover, it extends to the planet itself for which we are all to be stewards, for it is the place on which all human flourishing happens. (See the post on Dignity Made for an example of a company that hits on all levels.)

To be clear: I am not saying that each of these “stakeholders” have rights on you, that you must take each and every one into account for every decision you make. I am saying your enterprise has responsibilities to them, that fostering human flourishing necessarily includes not just customers but employees, communities, society, and the planet.

Stakeholders don’t have rights on you; your enterprise has responsibilities to them

This is not utopian. As economist John Kay writes in his recent book The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong (p. 347):

The proper goal of corporate activity is the flourishing of the multiple stakeholders of the corporation: employees, investors, suppliers and customers, the communities in which it operates and the corporation itself. For the corporation to flourish, it must contribute to the flourishing of the society in which it operates.

Professor Kay and I simply recognize what has always been true. It doesn’t mean you can never fire or lay off an employee, that you must do everything any community member demands, or that you can’t make proper trade-offs regarding effects on the world. It does mean you should not be underhanded in your dealings, exploit your employees, or attempt to addict people to your offerings. And it means you must recognize that profits are not the goal of your business; human flourishing is. Profits are the measure of how well you contribute to human flourishing.

Joe

© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II