Welfare 2.0?

Living in a welfare state, I am being increasingly convinced that the next level of welfare must embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) – in a radically different way. Not very unlike the way that the Indian conglomerate Tata has demonstrated CSR over the years (see this recent article if you are not familiar with Tata).

This radically different way of societal welfare is not just for the developing world. In fact, social media is also empowering grassroot movements, increasing social engagement and making an impact in the developed world. I believe that the best reason to embrace embrace CSR is to alleviate the costs associated with providing quality care while simulatenously strengthening the network in the local community. The "state" - federated or centralized - can only provide care up to a certain point after which it becomes prohibitively expensive. And communities cannot outsource all aspects of care-giving without losing a bit of the feeling of community. (Aside: Robots for care-giving seem to be set to play a dominant role in care-giving in Japan but Sweden approaches the same issue differently. There is room for a combination - depending on demographics and societal practices - though my personal preference is for the Swedish model. I believe it can scale better in the developing world.)

I believe that for CSR to scale up and out, it requires a trusted societal digital infrastructure. An infrastructure that encourages the creation of businesses to provide for eg. care-based services or education services while also enforcing transparency. Transparency generates trust, and trust can be used to provide deeply experiential services for consumers and citizens - while also being of value for service providers. See this article for an analysis on the economic value of trust.