The mistakes that management and directors make in supporting the community is to confuse enabler with outcome. Corporations must be responsive to community (and other stakeholders) in order to deliver their corporate outcomes (whatever they may be) - no more and no less.


Pusuing "community" on par with shareholder objectives is to confuse enabler with outcome.

A corporation should satisfy community and other stakeholder needs only to the extent that they have to, and to enable the corporation's objectives to be satisfied. Same applies to employees, etc. That doesn't mean that you don't provide an "exceptional" response - but only if it is required. To exceed the minimum (as politically uncomfortable as that may sound) is inapproproiate - particularly when the funds used for those purposes should be applied to unfulfilled corporate objectives.

For all of those well-meaning and well-intentioned people who advocate for the primacy of community, staff or other stakeholder outcomes, I have worked in and with hundreds of corporations and have seen literally billions of dollars of shareholder funds fritted away on well-meaning and well-intentioned initiatives that were irrelevant to corporate requirements but driven by subjective management interpretation, ego, networks or other non-core influencers. Sponsorships of "pet" projects without a corporate pay-off is a perfect example.

The corporation is an entity engineered to deliver shareholders their definition of "benefit". It is not an agent for change nor a tool for community, staff or others to achieve their personal objectives. To confuse this issue is to play craps with shareholder funds.