Social Enterprises and Certified B Corporations in Hong Kong: Development, Key Lessons Learnt, and Ways Forward

Abstract

Social enterprise (SE) has experienced rapid development over the last 15 years in Hong Kong both in quantity and quality of its solutions and models and the diversity of social issues tackled. In this chapter, we reflect on the journey of the rise of this sector in Hong Kong, the key drivers of and players in the sector, and some of the encouraging and discouraging lessons we learned so far--as observers and operators--in the sector. However, SE are not alone since there are other newer developments such as Certified B Corporation (B Corp)--starting six years ago in Hong Kong--which has a shared interest but follows a different trajectory and model closer to the business world. Following these insights, we conducted focus groups to further understand key businesspeople and social enterprise players’ views about what B Corp can do to achieve “shared prosperity” in Hong Kong. While this chapter does not offer a formula to resolve Hong Kong’s problems, it provides some useful recommendations on the applicability of B Corp as a framework to inspire and guide mainstream businesses to become purpose-driven companies that strike a healthy balance of people, profit, and planet.