Dispute Settlement Counsel

Posts Tagged ‘Spirituality in business’

Gloucester Fisherman Memorial

Every once in a while, my blog post is more a slice of life, driven by observations, travels or the events of a certain day.  It’s a break from the usual topic of dispute resolution, although I often find a nexus while writing it.

This post is about Gloucester, MA, America’s oldest seaport.  While beach towns, seaports, or fishing towns like Gloucester or Portland, ME, Portsmouth, NH or Montauk, NY are appealing, that is not why I write this.

I write this because I Love Gloucester, because my goal is to live there, and hopefully be able to practice our brand of dispute resolution there.  This place has been my getaway since I first came as a teenager and spent the day on Good Harbor Beach (GHB) with my friends.  I recognized early on that this place, along with neighboring Rockport and the rest of often overlooked Cape Ann, is a special place.  It is unique, alive, vibrant and like me, walks to a different drum of its own.  Among its several great beaches, two of them – GHB and Wingaersheek – are arguably are among the five most beautiful beaches anywhere in the U.S.

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What exactly is social enterprise? We read about social capitalist businesses, green companies, and sustainable business practices. One of my favorite magazines, Fast Company, frequently awards top social enterprise businesses and offers stories about how these companies serve some greater purpose beyond making a profit. Recalling Paul Newman’s compelling question in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I wanted to find out more about exactly “Who are these guys?” It seems there is a natural synergy between resolving disputes using non-adversarial methods and the core values of social enterprise, but I wanted to explore how this synergy could be acted upon in productive ways. 

So recently (3/27/09), I attended the Eleventh Annual Symposium on Spirituality in Business, sponsored by Sustainable Business Network of Boston at Babson College in Wellesley. My purpose was to learn more about the notions of sustainable business and get to know and listen to people who owned and worked with social enterprise businesses. Among the businesses attending was the day’s honoree, Equal Exchange, based in West Bridgewater, MA., a sustainable business built on a model of taking care of employees to the extent that the employees genuinely own the company and make the decisions together.   Read the rest of this entry »