Life giving corporations to support community

Aboriginal people are increasingly involved in setting up corporations resulting from determinations, major agreements, trusts and other corporations. 

Typically, the default vehicle for Aboriginal corporations is the western corporation with its western governance cultural assumptions and skill requirements. The ‘cultural gap’ between this model and Aboriginal communities can be problematic.

In her 2012 book,Owning our future: the emerging ownership revolution, Marjorie Kelly explains the Global Financial Crisis. She sources it to the ‘extractive’ nature of the western corporate model whose fundamental purpose is ‘maximising financial profit’. She argues our global future requires a shift of values and practice from the dominant extractive model to generative economic models whose purpose is ‘creating the conditions for life’. This involves a values shift ‘from maximising profit to sustaining life, from growth to sufficiency, and from individualism to community’. She then elaborates key principles of generative ownership design and provides many compelling examples where this is already happening globally.

This book challenges us all to consider how we can strike a balance between the different worlds we occupy and ponder a third space, a universal space that unites us as we look for more generative and sustainable ways to operate in the corporate world.

The presenters will draw on their own experience and conversations with different national thought leaders in the field.