The B Corporation: the design of them splices together the saying with the doing

The B Corporation, or Benefit Corporation, is a new class of corporation in the U.S. that is:

required to create a material positive impact on society and the environment and to meet higher standards of accountability and transparency.

The State of Maryland was the first to pass legislation in 2010 and since then 6 other States that have joined in. There are currently 517 certified B Corporations in 60 different industries.

Here’s what I really dig about it:

B Corporations address two critical problems:

1) Current corporate law makes it difficult for businesses to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions

2) The lack of transparent standards makes it difficult to tell the difference between a ‘good company’ and just good marketing

There’s no way in this design that the mission and value statements that an organization has – and what it markets publicly and internally in order to differentiate the brand – can ever be independent of any decision and action that an organization takes. I love that rigor.

That’s a result of a different design than the large not-for-profit arts world I live in where sometimes the ‘saying’ has a tendency to be different from the ‘doing’. Also, how the B Corporation defines “impact” is a lot more specific, measurable – and is something that the organization is held accountable for in a real way.