Real-World Lessons on Stakeholder Capitalism: How B Lab and B Corp Movement Catalyze Change in Society

Abstract

B Lab started in 2006, developing standards, a legal framework and certification to take into account all stakeholders for businesses that wanted to be not only the best in the world but also the best for the world. The objective was finding a way to harness capitalism’s positive elements while also protecting individuals and society from its negative aspects and, at the same time, helping scale businesses while remaining true to their social or environmental mission and creating a credible system of social and environmental transparency and accountability to engage consumers. Fifteen years later, B Lab and the B Corp movement are considered relevant actors in the purpose ecosystem, which are actively creating favorable framings, systems, policy change, and infrastructures to support the development of purpose-driven businesses. B Lab considers that businesses can act as a starting point to catalyze systemic change, given their direct relationship with multiple stakeholders within the economic system and society at large in order. This chapter presents B Lab’s theory of change and how it is developing its corresponding global strategies in practice.