Addressing Poverty and Inequality through Business

Volume 8. of Philanthropy Impact Magazine asks: Are Poverty and Inequality the Defining Challenges of Our Time? The Humanistic Management Center says yes, they are. They are defining challenges for humanity in general and of our time specifically.

This contribution to the magazine of London based Philanthropy Impact, an organization that aims to make sense of philanthropy and social investment, is focused on addressing poverty and inequality through business.

It opens by picking up one of the cornerstones in the debate on distributional justice, that the moral development of a society can be measured by how it treats its weakest members. In this sense poverty and inequality are defining challenges of humanity in general but the article also argues that they are defining challenges of our time specifically. We are in a situation where, for the first time in human history, we have it in our hands to eradicate extreme poverty. Allowing for everyone to live a dignified life has become an attainable goal, it has turned from a question of having enough or not, to a question of developing the capacity to share or not; from a question of volume based constraints to a question of overcoming distributional challenges.

On these grounds the article continues outlining the hallmarks of a human centered management paradigm embracing the positive power of business to address poverty and inequality. It concludes that it is an enormous privilege that we are given the opportunity to rid the world of extreme poverty and allow for everyone to live in dignity as a member of our global community. Let's make sure not to waste it.