Talk:Conscious business

Conscious Business is NOT Conscious Capitalism - Two terms, two sources, two concepts. We need a new and different page for Conscious Capitalism.

Hello, I arrived in this wikipage and was very surprised. In facts I am French and very interested in the subject as a scientist. The page mixes two things that are radically different because they come from two different lines of thought and sets of authors.

On the one hand there is Fred Kofman, with his book cited as the first reference. His intellectual affiliation associates K. Wilber and Peter Senge. It refers to the theories of complexity, the integral approach, the development of consciousness in humans. Excerpt Consciousness is the ability to experience reality, to be aware of our inner and outer worlds.

The word he uses is conscious business, in french "Entreprise consciente". We can add the conscious business initiative with people like Ervin László and the club de Budapest. The spiritual dimension is very present, the idea is that we should expand our consciousness to feel that we are part of "oneness".

Then, on a radicaly other hand, there are business leaders like John Mackey and some others, who have developed their idea in a totally empirical logic, full of common sense and reinforced (for J McKey) by the great success of their ethic/organic stores. He "tried things" and then conceptualized them. He also defends the ethics of the entrepreneur who wants to do something.

The word he uses is conscious capitalism (TM).

Here, the article gives tracks that go both lines of thought. It is extremely poor in sources. Kofman's book is the first quoted, while none of his ideas are included. To illustrate, here is the table of contents of his book. Nothing to do with what has in the article.

Contents

• Chapter 1: Conscious Business
• Chapter 2: Unconditional Responsibility
• Chapter 3: Essential Integrity
• Chapter 4: Ontological Humanity
• Chapter 5: Authentic Communication
• Chapter 6: Constructive Negotiation
• Chapter 7: Impeccable Coordination
• Chapter 8: Emotional Mastery
• Chapter 9: Entering the Market with Helping Hands

So maybe two WPages  ? Or none ?

--Vertsaxo (talk) 10:48, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Additional comment from Lauchlan Mackinnon, November 2019

I concur with the above comment.

Conscious Capitalism is a major movement in the business world. John Mackey's bestselling book "Conscious Capitalism" -https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Capitalism-New-Preface-Authors-ebook/dp/B00GQDL7MA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0 - the Conscious Capitalism network, and a range of activities around this such as Benefit corporations are a significant movement.

I also refer the reader to Mackey's 2005 debate with Milton Friedman at https://reason.com/2005/10/01/rethinking-the-social-responsi-2/ and to Patricia Aburdeen's book Megatrends 2010 - https://www.amazon.com/Megatrends-2010-Rise-Conscious-Capitalism/dp/1571744568/ref=sr_1_1 - which advocates "Conscious Capitalism" (not conscious business).

This "conscious business" thing while interesting is kind of like a footnote to the MUCH larger conscious capitalist movement. Having "Conscious Capitalism" redirect to "Conscious Business" is missing the point. "Conscious Capitalism" deserves its own page.

Wikipedia definitely needs a "conscious capitalism" page. Whether or not a "conscious business" page is for someone else to decide :)

Attempts to fix this are continually being hijacked by someone.

I found how to change the redirect and make the edits via Help:redirect. After I put some effort into creating a helpful initial stub for an article, someone immediately reverted it before I could publish an update to the talk page saying why I had made the change, and outlining some ideas for expanding on the stub I created. It wouldn't publish. They said:

"Hello, I'm Flyer22 Reborn. I wanted to let you know that I reverted one of your recent contributions —specifically this edit to Conscious capitalism—because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Help desk. Thanks. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:16, 22 November 2019 (UTC)"

I put effort into fixing it, this un-constructive reversion didn't help. Someone else can put the effort into fixing it next time! Hopefully they'll have better luck.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 00:08, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I tried again the next day, and it got reverted again with no logic and no explanation. Bloody annoying. It seems someone has a strong commitment to keeping the quality of Wikipedia articles to low quality. Lauchlanmack (talk) 22:03, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

What a Conscious Capitalism article should cover

It should address some of the following

Mackey's book on Conscious Capitalism -https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Capitalism-New-Preface-Authors-ebook/dp/B00GQDL7MA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

Mackey's four tenets of conscious capitalism -

1. purpose,
2. leadership,
3. stakeholder integration, and
4. culture and management

How these tenets boil down to

1. Have a higher purpose beyond profit and
2. Adopt an approach that resects and balances multiple stakeholder groups

How multiple studies support the Conscious Capitalism tenet that businesses having a higher purpose beyond profit lead to greater profit - e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/caterinabulgarella/2018/09/21/purpose-driven-companies-evolve-faster-than-others/#23d8755855bc

How Conscious Capitalism addresses the issue of Shareholder value through Stakeholder theory

Mackey's 2005 debate with Milton Friedman at https://reason.com/2005/10/01/rethinking-the-social-responsi-2/ about shareholder value

Previous books such as

• Raj Sisioda's Firms of Endearment
• Patricia Aburdeen's Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism - https://www.amazon.com/Megatrends-2010-Rise-Conscious-Capitalism/dp/1571744568/ref=sr_1_1

Benefit corporations

Examples of Conscious Capitalism, including Mackey's Whole Foods and its acquisition by Amazon

The Conscious Capitalism Alliance started by Mackey

Critiques of Conscious Capitalism.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 00:14, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Apparent bias in this pages content

Raising the issue:

I note that the unusual name ALIA is shared by the person who started this wiki page AND the Operations person, ALIA BRALEY, of fallingfruit.tv Same person? Of course. Falling Fruit is a new business that is pushing Conscious Business and is NOT a proper, objective source for content on this page. Ironic, isn't it? Supposedly a Conscious enterprize is highly ethical, yet here we see blatently unethical conduct. Tsk, tsk. --172.193.142.167 20:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Confirming the issue:

Hey There, I am Alia, and indeed I am the person working at FallingFruit.tv and the writer of this wiki article. And you are right again, we are "pushing" conscious business. There is no Wiki page currently (I have looked thoroughly) which captures the Conscious Business Movement. It is a phenomena that has been recognized far before we at Falling Fruit decided to make a netcast show that delves into the topic philosophically. It is my opinion that Wikipedia needed an article on this topic: it is a highly relevant, highly active, and important social phenomenon. I did not present Falling Fruit within the article as being important in this movement (right now, we are not). Instead, I said what I know and have been considering and studying in various for-profit and non-profit endeavors over the last few years. I also did not put the link to my company's website on the bottom of the page. I found out today that this was done by a co-worker of mine. I share his sentiments. If we were scientists researching frogs in the Amazon, we would link relevant articles to our research. There are books which delve into the concepts of Conscious Business deeper than our netcasts have yet (we are a new company), but for online resources (which are the things one would link to), our content is of the highest relevance I have found. I am aware that I currently do not have the ability to write an article on Conscious Business that is well-researched enough for Wikipedia, but I was under the impression that people would take the basic article that I began, and completely transform it using their own sphere of knowledge. If that is not how this works, I am happy to have my post taken off the website. If that is how it works, I encourage you and others to change what needs to be changed, whether it is the articles content, links, etc. I deeply believe in the importance of the Conscious Business movement, and I am glad that I wrote and article, and perhaps am now having an interesting conversation that will bring more attention- perhaps from people more skilled at writing Wikipedia articles- to the fantastic ways business can use their social and fiscal power. Thanks for keeping us on our toes, - Alia Braley

Discussion and actions:

Alia, the point of a wiki article is not to promote your business or yourself or, even, because it is so very important. The article should be encyclopedic; it is supposed to be objective. I am critical of your effort, and the effort of Falling Fruit, because of a failure of objectivity. This article should not be an ad. It is not supposed to "bring more attention ... to the fantastic ways business can use their social and fiscal power." It is supposed to be baldly, blandly objective. --Enkido (talk) 23:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it may be helpful to work further on the definition of Conscious Business. Defining it as a category of business - something like an ethical (or an unethical) business - seems to me to be only one way of looking at it. Surely it can also mean a way of approaching business - at a personal level, for example. Redwaterjug (talk) 15:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

This topic, is inappropriate, misleading. However if we move this under marketing as a marketing strategy it might fit within wikipedias standards. NicholasCarlough (talk)date=February 2015}}

Edit: Lauchlan Mackinnon, November 2019:

I note that this was first raised as a problem in 2007, 12 years ago. The bigger problem as I see it is that the main encyclopedia article and bigger topic - Conscious Capitalism - is redirecting to here. The priority action from my point of view is to break that link and create the Conscious Capitalism page as the main destination for searches on the topic of conscious capitalism.

Triple bottom line

isn't it that in the the "triple bottom line" § I had to add the subsection on profit? Consciousness of something I suppose, but not so very much. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 12:04, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion needed - The difference between Conscious Business and Conscious Capitalism

I note as many have done here that there is a very real difference between Conscious Business and Conscious Capitalism. A redirect from the former to the latter is in place. I, like others here before me, have attempted to create a stub for Conscious Capitalism and separate it from Conscious Business. Again, like others, the link has been re-implemented and the stub removed without much explanation.

We need a real discussion on this, as the two are different topics, and one should not be a redirect from the other. Conscious Capitalism has been defined by authors (Mackey and Sisodia), has a movement, a set of 4 principles, and a number of companies adopting it. This is different from Conscious Business which I believe is primarily based on Kofman's book of the same name.

The current default seems to be to simply undo any edits that recognise this difference, or which separate the two into their 2 separate contexts. How may we go about resolving this? Does it need escalation? --BaldInLondon (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2021 (UTC)