Megan Kashner, Professor of Practice at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, has graduate degrees in both social work and business and leads the global Impact and Sustainable Finance Faculty Consortium. Kashner explains the benefit of having degrees in social work and management: “Success in management and business requires an understanding of not only markets, but the players and dynamics that influence decision-making at the consumer and corporate level. By layering the human and behavioral lenses of clinical social work into market strategy, one can understand and predict what will (and what will likely not) yield real change. Social work as a discipline has been considering human behavior in the social environment, as well as the systems that impact and influence human behavior for a century and its wisdom has a great deal to teach us today.” 90 Fast Company has recognized the value of social work being woven into business. It predicts that social and emotional capabilities will be in greater need and demand as employers and employees must find work-life balance in chaotic times. 91 As SIIF and Japan’s Impact Economy look at the next opportunities, they should look beyond business alone and consider fields that address the complexities of change. Integrating these worlds of ethics, justice, law, and business can offer new perspectives on defining impact. Strengthen Community Integration into Impact Policies Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) launched Japan’s Impact Consortium as an “interactive communications platform where impact-driven stakeholders can share expertise and experiences. The Consortium aims to support various initiatives to realize impact through business and to develop impact investment into an established approach and market.” 92 This is an important network to help members, and the broader community measure the Why and What of impact investing. Simultaneously, making a commitment to involve community in the impact process will require changes in behavior by investors and explicit policy and regulatory language. In 2024, FSA issued “Basic Guidelines on Impact Investing (Impact Finance).” 93 The guidelines recognize that impact investment is nascent and is evolving. They were designed to “foster common understandings on basic concepts and processes” and further elaborate markets and practices on impact investment, by clarifying the basic elements expected for impact investment that fund-raisers, fund-providers, and other participants in impact investment markets could refer to when structuring, financing,
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Ten Years in the Making
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