Our Basque companies try to overcome a context full of uncertainties and insecurities in the midst of a bureaucracy that increasingly restricts their way of acting on a day-to-day basis. We can already speak of a new industrial logic imposed by the cathartic circumstances that have occurred in the last three years, characterized by the sum of obligations that fall on them derived in turn from multiple requirements: decarbonization, the emergence of new technologies and new models of business, the “relocation” or at least the “regionalization” of markets, the relativization of the paradigm of “multi-localized global company” and the vulnerability of supply chains, among others.
Added to this is an enormously important challenge that has arisen: the reputational dimension of the company, which is no longer a passing fad nor is it translated into a mere marketing operation; it is necessary to go beyond CSR and preventive compliance instruments, to define and delimit social parameters that can be extrapolated to the actions of companies and that take into account their heterogeneity and diversity (business size, sectors of activity, markets in which he acts).
It is appropriate to carry out a redefinition of the concept of competitiveness to bet on business models that develop their activity promoting not only economic-financial profitability in the short term, but also to maximize the social value contributed in the medium and long term. Without forgetting that sustainable competitiveness, understood as something that adds value to its social environment, is also beneficial for customers and interesting for investors.
In short, it is an active element of attracting capital for companies.
The ultimate purpose is to recognize all those companies, whether small or large, that manage to add and contribute social value by creating quality employment, operating with environmental and social responsibility, generating wealth throughout the value chain and paying taxes on local farms and benefiting to society as a whole.
Our companies operate in an aggressive globalized environment, where the commitment to digitization and R+D+i constitute the basis for being highly competitive. The proposed sustainability challenge involves transcending these strictly financial parameters to attend to others that prioritize values linked to social wealth anchored in solidarity and a shared vision of our future as a society.
We must establish mechanisms to offer investors and consumers valuable information that helps them learn how a company’s goods and services are produced and what they contribute to their environment. The ultimate ratio lies in making instruments available to society that increase transparency and enable informed, coherent, and responsible decision-making.
We cannot pretend to become the Phoenicians of the 21st century, which today are represented by the countries of Southeast Asia (China, India). From our business and social dynamics, it makes no sense to pretend to operate or function with a strict dynamic of lowering costs, because the sacrifice of social rights on the altar of competitiveness has not made us better or more sustainable.
What model should we claim and deepen in the 21st century? That of overcoming the business dimension as a mere sum of capital and work, in the conception of a company as a group of people united by a project, a new company culture based on mutual trust, key to be able to be proactive before so many challenges that are crowded in the day to day of our companies.