The Conscious Capitalism movement goes a step further. For example, a
recently published book of essays is titled Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and
Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.9 It contains an essay by John
Mackey, the CEO of highly successful Whole Foods Market, who has become
the leading business advocate of Conscious Capitalism. Mackey argues that Conscious
Capitalism represents a “new paradigm” for business:
Business needs to become holistic and integral with deeper comprehensives purposes.
Corporations must rethink why they exist. If business owners/entrepreneurs
begin to view business as a complex and evolving interdependent system
and manage their business more consciously for the well-being of all their major
stakeholders, while fulfilling their highest business purposes, then I believe that
we would begin to see the hostility towards capitalism and business disappear.10
According to two other business proponents of Conscious Capitalism,
“the profit motive, not government or charity, will create the kind of socially
responsible world we want our kids and grandkids to grow up in.” They add
that “creating a win-win business model—with the wins being what benefits
the company, its stakeholders, and the environment/society in general—is the
only way to optimize value.”[italics added]11
Likewise, Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms, argues that firms
practicing Conscious Capitalism will invariably profit from their actions. His
standard lecture to business students, entrepreneurs, and managers is entitled
“How to make money and save the world.”12 Like Mackey, Hirshberg strongly
believes that a Conscious Capitalist business model both should and can be widely
adopted—precisely because it represents such a sound approach to creating
value.