Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism, Christopher Marquis, Yale University Press, September 13, 2020

For this special issue of Management International on corporate social responsibility (CSR), we review Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism. As faculty and researchers who have been watching the growth of certified B Corps and the introduction of Benefit Corporation legislation in the United States since 2013, we were interested to see if the book lived up to its billing as presenting a compelling narrative that “all companies can and should be more like B Corps.” The author of the book is Christopher Marquis, PhD. Since 2015, Marquis has been the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University. Prior to that, Marquis spent a decade at Harvard Business School. It’s there that he first learned about B Corps from one of his students, while teaching a graduate business course on CSR in 2009. Intrigued by what he heard, Marquis forged a relationship with the B Lab founders and immersed himself in the study of B Corps. In 2010, he published his first B Corp case study, entitled B Lab: Building a New Sector of the Economy. Since then Marquis has built strong connections to the global B Corp movement, and by his own account written more than 50 Harvard cases, many about B Corps. He draws on this extensive knowledge for his book, which he has organized into four topics comprising a total of 11 chapters. The final topic in the book focuses on the future and effecting change. In Chapter 9 Marquis recounts the challenges faced by some B Corps in maintaining their certification, especially in states where corporations are required to reincorporate as a Benefit Corporation. In an effort, to promote broader participation, Marquis describes how, in an effort to promote broader participation, the B Lab to created tools and systems for companies who share the triple-bottom line philosophy – even if they cannot or choose not to become certified. In Chapter 10, Marquis discusses the interest of large multinationals in B Corp certification, using Danone as the exemplar, and the work that B Lab had to undertake to adapt the process and standards given the scale and complexity of the large corporations. He proposes that such adaptations were necessary to continue to grow the critical mass of B Corps beyond small and medium sized enterprises, and to increase support for the stakeholder primacy model of capitalism. In the closing Chapter 11, Marquis presents the lack of consumer awareness of B Corps and the value of the certification process as a significant concern that needs to be tackled to ensure the movement does not lose its momentum. He outlines steps being taken by B Lab to increase the perceived brand value of the “Certified B Corp” logo and suggests there are indications that such efforts are paying off, especially with Millennials and community-oriented shoppers. In his brief conclusion, Marquis returns to the idea that, given the social and environmental problems we are facing as a society, business’s preoccupation with profit maximization is problematic. He is hopeful that the B Corp movement will continue to grow and inspire more businesses to embrace a triple bottom line orientation. He encourages all of his readers to do their part to support the B Corp movement and help effect this much needed shift to stakeholder primacy. To equip people to wage this campaign, Marquis has populated his personal website with a special section devoted to Better Business with additional resources, including a 31-page teaching note, a guide to facilitate small group book discussions and short primers on related topics. Marquis is clearly …