Michael Gerber Quotes

I believe in 'business has a force for good.' You know, business has an impact on society. Of course, it creates jobs. It creates prosperity, but on the other hand, we also leave a negative footprint behind.

The companies that are the most influential and most successful are the ones that care about impact and the influence they have on the world.

Understanding how your business affects human rights and using that knowledge to shape appropriate policies and practices is crucial to achieving what should be the goal of all corporations - sustainable growth.

I pretty much believe, as everyone in the B Team does, that business must succeed beyond the bottom line. More important than profits is how you get to them. Measuring financial earnings and losses only is definitely not enough and has led us astray from creating a better world for all.

It took a generation for companies to recognise their responsibilities in terms of labour practices and another generation for them to recognise their environmental obligations.

And also, more and more businesses really want to do the right thing. They feel better about themselves, their workers feel better, and so do their customers. I think this is equally true in the transnational corporations, but it is harder to express in those situations.

I think that, too many times, business has been seen as acting in its narrow self-interest rather than, essentially, contributing more broadly to society. I think a lot of that is unintentional; I don't think that many managers are deliberately trying to be unethical or are not trying to be sensitive to social needs.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

It's not just about checking the box on corporate social responsibility. It's about hitting our bottom line.

Profit isn't and shouldn't be the mission of business. The mission of business is to help people. To help your customers, your co-workers, your employees, and your partners. Success is not a number - it's not X dollars or Y customers - it's a measurement of VALUE.

The voluntary approach to corporate social responsibility has failed in many cases.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

It's a full on job just looking for human social responsibility.

What is good for society is also good for business.

You can't have a healthy society unless you have healthy companies that are making a profit, that are employing people and that are growing.

For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility, and the idea of a company as a super-organism.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make people's lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.

Our society does not give nearly enough credit to business leaders who create jobs, behave ethically and provide products and services that enhance our lives.

Millennials are more aware of society's many challenges than previous generations and less willing to accept maximizing shareholder value as a sufficient goal for their work. They are looking for a broader social purpose and want to work somewhere that has such a purpose.

Despite their good intentions, today's businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives - to do good and make money simultaneously.

Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff.

At a lot of companies founded on principles, the notion of making money is almost antithetical to the ethos of the place. From the very beginning, our business has existed to meet the needs and desires of multiple constituencies: customers, team members, vendors, shareholders, the community.

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty.

At a relatively early age, I began to believe that building a business was perhaps the greatest opportunity for making an impact, because it's a tool for making a change in the world.