In a new Wiki Book (www.citizenrenaissance.com), authors Robert Phillips and Jules Peck explore the potential of a new Tripartite Contract between Business, Politics and Citizenship; a Contract built and conducted in the spirit of openness, transparency and real engagement; one designed to deliver the common good and safeguard the future of the planet.

Peck and Phillips argue three seismic shifts have re-shaped our world: The Perfect Storm surrounding Climate Change; the Wellbeing Imperative, which sees accelerating growth but diminishing happiness and an increasing wealth-poverty gap; and the axiomatic rise of Digital Democracy. Phillips and Peck contend that Progressive Citizens will hold Businesses and Governments in check, while a new and more mature Business and Political leadership will flourish, as many of the required behavioural changes become “norms” and as the democratising power of the Digital revolution takes final root.

In an extract published here, Phillips and Peck consider five immediate and possible implications of this new Contract – and examine what the future may hold.

1. An intensification of the framework for change

Progressive Business leaders understand the need to raise the bar on a level playing field that only Governments can enact. Often the current market framework has inbuilt perverse subsidies or incentives which block corporate shifts to sustainability. A new Wellbeing Economy will need the active support of Business. Acting alone to push the envelope of sustainability can be hard. But if all companies have to shift due to framework changes (fiscal, regulatory etc) then there will be no free-riders to gain from laggard behaviour.

The Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change is one example of companies encouraging Government to do just this – though too infrequent and not ambitious enough. Companies need to align their public policy advocacy programmes with their newly developed built-to-last ‘Capitalism 3.0’ ambitions, values and purposes, based on genuinely sustainable models.

2. An acceleration of Consumer Enlightenment

As well as their “footprint” of carbon and other resource use or waste production, all companies have a large “Brainprint” on society in the way they communicate issues to the public. This is of course most relevant to communications companies, all of which could do far more to help Citizens engage with sustainability and Wellbeing debates. But all companies – through their marketing, advertising and general Communications – have a role to play in helping inform their audiences and help them engage with the debate about the Consumer-Citizen shift. We will enter a new period of enlightenment, where business will enable Citizens who will, in turn, help develop better and more responsible business thinking.

3. The emergence of New Business and Government Models

The logical consequence of these societal shifts is a radically different relationship between Citizens, Business and Politics. Citizen and Business brains will be deployed in the political world within a system of truer and proper Proportional Representation, to help achieve sustainable solutions built from the bottom-up; “People’s Parliaments” may well flourish, on-line if not in bricks & mortar. A freer, more democratic movement will ensure better representation of ideas, as thinking flows faster and more openly in the digital space and among so-called influencers. Businesses will open source solutions in a new iteration of Citizen Councils – replacing focus groups with engaged and active real-people contributors to Business and brand development. Investors and funds will necessarily deploy a Citizen dimension. Garage NGOs will grow to challenge the increasingly large-scale operations of the traditional operators, bringing about fresh and dynamic new levels of thinking.

4. The likelihood of new Corporate Ownership systems

Citizens and Business will coalesce in new and inspiring ways, in the wake of the Citizen Renaissance. New forms of company ownership will encourage cooperation rather than rampant competition. Cross-ownership models, as already seen in Japan and Germany, may become the norm. Mutuals, cooperatives and partnerships also offer a vision for the new corporate form – and will, in turn, re-shape the global economic model.

The way we define “work” will shift as the difference between paid and unpaid parts of the economy alter with new measures of progress. Where work is seen not solely as a means of gaining wealth but for increasing human fulfilment and expression of creativity, attitudes to “work” will alter.

As Clive Hamilton puts it in Growth Fetish: “The shift to self-employment, or “ownwork”, and the spread of part-time work are laying the foundation for a post-growth society. While capitalist enterprises are driven by the need to make profits and expand, people who work for themselves or in small self-directed groups do not of necessity operate under the same compulsion.”

5. The real possibility of a Post-Growth Society

When the changes to the market framework are enacted, “companies” will need to be nimble to navigate their way through seismic shifts in culture and Consumer choice changes, as well as economic regulation and fiscal shifts which may bring radical changes in some or all of the ways described above – towards a new, global acceptance of Needs based on equitable human and planetary Wellbeing maximisation.

The implications of this, most fundamental, shift are several-fold:

• International trade in food will only occur where food security is already strong in exporting countries and where full true production costs are born
• More local economic activity will be in the ascendant
• New forms of responsible marketing will emerge which seek to maximise customer engagement with intrinsic values
• Investment will be mainly for replacement and qualitative improvement, instead of for speculation on quantitative expansion, and would occur less often. This of course has huge implications for financial sector companies
• Cooperation, not just rampant competition, will grow between firms
• Employment will alter radically:
  • Work – not solely as a means of gaining wealth but for increasing human fulfilment and expression of creativity
  • Accelerate the current trends towards “downshifting”
  • A shift away from working for companies towards working for ourselves and each other
  • A shift back to traditional low impact, labour-intensive, low-input and sustainable organic farming

The turmoil in global financial markets in recent weeks has served as both a rude awakening and an apposite reminder. Some of society’s most holy institutions may not be so holy after all. There is a rich metaphor for our times. Post-factual regulation and legislation against greedy and excessive bad practices might just save the financial systems from total collapse; but there is only one planet – and we can ill-afford to look back a decade hence and say ‘whoops, we should have acted sooner’. Governments, Businesses and Citizens have a real and urgent responsibility to act and to act fast. A new Tripartite Contract is a compelling necessity.

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The three “seismic shifts” (the Perfect Storm surrounding Climate Change, the Wellbeing Imperative and the rise of Digital Democracy) are described in detail at www.citizenrenaissance.com.  The authors are actively inviting contributions to the discussion and towards building – collectively – a Manifesto for Progressive Business, Politics and Citizenship.