● Issues

○ Society is evolving = will be very different years from today

■ Eg technology's huge influence shaping society
■ Managers (executives) must understand this shaping of our environment
■ People are more informed
■ More choices with their money
■ More responsive to negative effects in society
■ Eg social media (United Airlines incident)
■ More reactive and proactive
■ Also misinformed though!
■ Big social media companies are investigated because their impact on people's
ideas of what's right and wrong
■ What's considered socially responsible today will be very different in 10/15/20 years
■ Eg Sherwin Williams using lead based paint
■ In the early 20th century, this was not a problem
■ Illegal now
■ Recent issue: should they be retroactively sued? Held responsible for
practices that they did 50 years ago, back when it was legal?
○ Significance of business in its social context
■ Understanding how businesses impact and are impacted = important
■ Organizations are now undergoing revolutionary changes
○ Businesses = whenever they see change, they see opportunity
■ In Ottawa, it was legal to use chemical based weed killer on lawn
■ 10 years ago it was outlawed
■ A year later, an iron based solution came out
■ When one was banned, it created an opportunity for someone else!!

● Different types of organizations

○ Corporations
■ Tend to be limited liability (shareholders cannot be sued)
■ Eg if you owned part of IBM, they get sued, and lose their lawsuit, you as a shareholder will not
have to pay for that loss
○ Partnerships
○ Proprietorships
■ More of a tight integration between the owner and organization
● Three levels of government
○ Federal
■ Postal system, military
○ Provincial
■ Focus on healthcare and education
○ Municipal
○ Different responsibilities = must be able to understand all three
● Civil society segment
○ Stakeholders! They're impacted by the organization
○ Organized and unorganized social networks
■ Communities
 ■ Charities (the way they get funding is different)
■ NGOs
■ Volunteers
■ Significant part of the overall economy
■ Philanthropic efforts
■ Social donating, sponsorships
■ Passionate members of society spend time and effort supporting it
○ Have influence and capability
● Must understand how these three interact
● Government creates regulatory environments regarding what is acceptable, and those who stray outside of that
are punished (through fines for example)
○ Eg in US, lots of instruction around banking industry
■ Billions of dollars in fines are paid by banks to government bc of violations of regulations
○ Government sets the environment, business operates in it, but civil society influence, for example, the
government
■ Eg the trans mountain pipeline in BC
■ Courts have agreed with citizens saying gov hasn't listened to citizens properly and they won't
continue unless the questions are addressed
■ Citizens influence the other two (gov and business)
● Sorting mechanism
○ Businesses have a sorting mechanism
■ Supply and demand
○ Government = redistribution of wealth, potential possibilities, creating a structure that business
operates under (w/ punishments and deterrents for companies that stray outside of that)
■ Eg a company pollutes the river, gov makes sure that the regulations are followed
● Boundaries between the three parties aren't super solid (there's an overlap)
○ Businesses donate to charities (CSR programs)
■ Eg RBC supports youth initiatives
■ Doing things that you'd expect government or citizens to do
○ Canada Post runs a profit
■ Government is getting money, some of that is business
○ Citizens
■ Some individually buy and sell things (eg Amazon, eBay)
● Business has such an impact on society that it can't just be about making profit
○ For example, companies dumping pollutants in water isn’t feasible anymore
● Canada’s macroenvironment: the business-government-society connection
○ The modified “boulding triangle” depicts the three segments of the domestic macro environment:
BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
○ At the top appears B, G AND S in its purest form
■ Pure reciprocity (civil society)
■ Act of exchanging things for mutual benefit
■ Pure exchange (business)
■ Pure coercion (government)
■ All inner territory represents organizations embodying different mixtures of the three: a
variety of socioeconomic and governance relationships
○ Rules, or sorting mechanisms of coordination for each segment, are based on different principles:
 ■ Business: supply and demand forces
■ Government: redistribution and coercion
■ Civil society: cooperation, reciprocity and solidarity
○ Note that the boundaries between BS AND G are not well defined because they are not rigid frontiers;
they are wavering and continually evolving, overlapping, interacting and developing interdependence
○ Survey reveals that in Canada, each of these three segments occupies approximately one third of the
organizational/institutional territory denoted by the surface of the Boulding Triangle
○ Business is more than simply making profit! Business’s relation with society is increasingly complex