Business leadership can play an integral role in bettering society. While businesses have traditionally focused on driving profit and “meeting the bottom line”, society’s many pressing challenges mean that there is an opportunity for business leaders to drive social innovation and solve society’s problems at their roots.
Pless, Murphy, Maak, and Sengupta (2021) published “Societal challenges and business leadership for social innovation,” which discusses how certain leadership styles are more conducive to solving social problems. A more relational approach is favourable to driving social change, as it requires interacting with many stakeholders to ensure “second-order social innovation, ” which addresses the underlying causes of societal challenges.
In this post, we’ll discuss business leadership and social innovation and how businesses are evolving to focus on societal change. We’ll also discuss some ways you can learn more about building leadership skills to help drive societal improvement.
What is business leadership?
Business leadership involves individuals and teams building and maintaining a successful business. This success requires coordinating various tasks and activities across departments and responding to customer and marketplace needs. In simple terms, business leaders develop products and services to meet the needs of their clients and customers to ensure an optimal customer experience.
However, the changing nature of today’s world requires more than just creating financially successful businesses. Recently, there has been more of a focus on meeting social needs, which includes taking care of staff and contributing to corporate social responsibility initiatives.
What is social innovation?
Social innovation differs from business innovation in that it doesn’t focus on profit but on meeting a societal need or addressing a social problem. While non-profit and non-governmental organisations typically focus on social entrepreneurship, for-profit businesses can also be socially innovative with the right leadership.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), social entrepreneurship has moved from the margins into the mainstream due to the pressing challenges we face worldwide. Their approach argues that business and social innovation don’t need to be mutually exclusive and that people can build socially oriented companies and make money simultaneously. In fact, it is imperative for even the most profit-driven business leaders to be socially and environmentally conscious in terms of how they do business if we want to create a better world and future for humanity.
Why is business leadership important?
Sound business leadership is vital because, without it, we cannot drive economic and social progress. Therefore, we need resilient and capable leaders to ensure financial feasibility and address social problems.
The scale of issues such as climate change, social inequality and a growing mistrust of political systems in a politically tense world also means that we cannot rely on governments alone to solve the challenges of our time.
How business leadership is evolving
Traditionally, leadership was a vertical, top-down process with leaders and followers. This style is still relevant in specific cultural and business contexts. However, from the research paper mentioned above, Pless, Murphy, Maak, and Sengupta show how a traditional leadership approach focuses mainly on shareholders and ensuring individual benefit, so it is not the most appropriate leadership style for ensuring lasting social change, although it might contribute to change on some level.
In contrast, the most successful way to ensure lasting change through second-order social innovation is through a more relational and compassionate style of stakeholder-focused leadership. This shift in form is an integral part of a company’s culture and encompasses the entire organisational structure from the ground up. This structure still has a hierarchy, but how the organisation and leadership function within that hierarchy is different.
The researchers mentioned above share examples of how top-down leadership often doesn’t ensure effective social change because the business isn’t meeting the actual needs of the people they work with. However, when companies work with people and communities, they can drive more profound change by listening to diverse voices and genuinely wanting to solve problems.
Learn leadership skills to drive social innovation
In a changing world, it’s essential to encourage people to learn relevant leadership skills, build a resilient and adaptable society and work to solve our global challenges.
If you want to improve your leadership skills, SACAP Global offers many short online courses to help you enhance your leadership capabilities, learn business management skills and improve your entrepreneurial know-how. These courses include the following:
- Intro to Management and Leadership: This course will equip you with the skills to manage and lead effectively, which can be helpful when building any business.
- Business Management: Global Trends & Organisational Functions: Learn more about the complex micro and macro factors that influence a business, which are particularly relevant when building a social enterprise.
- Essential Entrepreneurial Skills: Whether you want to start your own business or work in a large company, building entrepreneurial know-how can equip you with the skills to drive innovation across the board.
- Intro to Organisational Development: If you’re interested in building a socially innovative business, it’s crucial to understand how to develop a company with inherent collaborative and relational values. Leadership and company culture go hand in hand.
Related Courses
Intro to Management & Leadership
Acquire practical skills to successfully grow a business and its people. Learn when to manage and when to lead.
Business Management: Global Trends & Organisational Functions
Investigate complex environments that impact a business. Learn how to successfully navigate those complexities as a manager.
Essential Entrepreneurial Skills
Discover how to generate business ideas, develop a business model and create a business plan.
Intro to Organisation Development: Theory & Practice
Support organisational change through aligning a company’s strategy, structure, people, rewards, metrics and management processes.