I hate to admit it, I’m actually a Go Bulls person, not a Gator, I’m from the University of South Florida. Good morning everyone. There are lots of trends in management in today’s corporations. There’s some we could probably do without. But there’s one that is rapidly gaining in popularity that I think is worthy of our attention and that is the concept of shared value. Shared value is the idea of interlocking business with society, using business resources to strategically solve social issues. It was introduced by Michael Porter, the worldwide guru on competitive advantage, and his partner Mark Kramer. Now Porter and Kramer assert that it is necessary to create this new form of language because of a diminished trust in corporations. They argue that corporate social responsibility equals language that addresses the image problems of corporations and society only. In contrast, shared value becomes a form of practical intervention. Now a number of transnational corporations have started buying into this idea. Vodafone, for example, offer low-price cell phones to rural poor populations and developing nations. Here, ideas of value are created through the provision of mobile banking services to rural farmers in order for them to improve their crop management techniques. Citibank also offers microfinancing and financial literacy programs to disenfranchised or unbanked populations. So shared value is about creating value for everyone. It’s a win-win both for corporations and for society. But it’s this idea of value that is problematic, is strategically ambiguous and doesn’t really mean anything. But despite this ambiguity, firms are given a very specific blueprint for success. CEOs are called to have the vision for shared value. So the commitment from top executives is integral. Firms are told that social responsibility now no longer belongs in PR departments. The second part of the blueprint is that of strategy. Firms are encouraged to prioritize key social challenges, to identify business opportunities and to set ambitious, measurable goals. The third part of the blueprint is that of delivery. Firms are encouraged to leverage and deploy corporate assets and external stakeholders to be competitive and to execute the performance of this idea through scaling their shared value initiatives, to communicate their shared value actions with the investment community and to shift from a defensive to an affirmative engagement with corporate stakeholders, particularly in low and middle income countries. Now Nestle, they are the poster child of shared value and coined the term in 2006, which is rather ironic because Nestle, as we know, has a blemish reputation. They face long-standing boycotts over in the infant formula scandals from the 1970s onwards and they have become the prime targets of activists in the global bottling industries over environmental concerns. But Nestle fully embraces the tenets of shared value. They produce an annual shared value report and even offer a prize in creating shared value. They focus on shared value through three main areas that we can see here, nutrition, water and rural development. One way that Nestle creates value is through progress. We can see that here in this picture of the rural Nestle farmer growing genetically modified coffee for the espresso machines. Progress or rural development in this instance involves the framing of impoverished countries as magnets for development, changes to more efficient farming practices in these countries, such as the introduction of genetically modified plants. Here progress equals a viable driver of global development and a solution to the perceived deficiencies of existing rural practices. But the obvious question remains, what could be problematic about this? Well, one way that we can analyze this form of communication is through the use of God terms. God terms are paid the highest respect to in culture. They are unquestioned. They demand sacrifice, such as democracy, technology, progress. God terms are inherently positive. They are intrinsically persuasive and forward moving. They rise us upward towards some goal that is better, which is in opposition to devil terms, which obviously involves stagnation or our inability to drive their BMW. In ideas of progress as a God term are used in Nestle’s creating shared value reports, utopian forms of value are created by implicitly blaming local communities for using improper farming techniques or the inefficient control of their environment. This linguistic underperformance of lack of progress is needed for value to be created. So here in the context of shared value, progress as a God term becomes unquestioned because as a culture we partly believe that our destiny is to constantly improve to move towards a distant goal and that such improvement should be observable even in our rural environment. But some researchers remark that progress is based on an economic or capitalistic rationality that is often paid for by third world countries and their populations. Modern scientific practices such as the farming of coffee are pitted against indigenous agricultural practices. We do not stop to question what legitimates sustainable development and the autonomy of the local community. A second way that Nestle creates value is through nutrition or the improvement of the quality of food and diets of involved populations. Magic stock is but one example. Here Nestle’s product is sold to the bottom of the pyramid or the greatest number of the world’s poor to countries such as South Africa and India. Social plus economic value leads to the improvement of the health of involved populations as well as higher sales for Nestle. This form of shared value through nutrition is presented as being positive. But in this instance nutrition is a God term glosses over the economic inequalities of the situation. Nestle plus consumerism equals the solution to social issues. It suggests that nutritional deficiencies are inevitable if Nestle does not intervene. Such a capitalistic model overrides local food customs. When ideas about nutrition become linguistically westernized and consummated with Nestle’s worldview. So shared value promises a win-win and utopian forms of value but who really wins in this circumstance? The language of shared value states that corporations are the ones that should exclusively solve our social issues. But this places them in positions of political and economic authority. It privileges their economic interests and that leads us to some really important questions as public interest communicators. How much moral and political power can we or should we assign to corporations? Whose objectives are ultimately being served when we introduce initiatives such as shared value? Do social initiatives such as these truly seek to promote a common good? And the final and perhaps most important question, knowing that such social interventions often adhere to an economic formula, are the premises of these initiatives truly in our public interest?