The elea Way - Preview

elea’s FOUNDATION AND OPER ATING MODEL

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opportunities and are willing and able to dedicate large parts of their life’s energy to building an impact enterprise. While we do, from time to time, work with official aid organizations to benefit from matched fund- ing opportunities, we are rather skeptical of projects initiated by public development aid and carried out by employed functionaries. The ethical companion of liberty is responsibility, which relates to the second age-old ethical question of “What is responsible behavior?” Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice, once said, “Freedom is not fun, it is responsible choice” (Drucker, 2004, p. 49). As opportunities and pos- sibilities for individuals have expanded in our global era, so have global challenges, vulnerabilities, and risks. Responsible people and organizations should, therefore, accept and live up to differentiated thresholds of respon- sibility, depending on the number of positive liberties that they have, in the broadest sense of the word; that is, not only in terms of their command over financial and physical resources but also their ambitions, energy, expertise, and capabilities. This ethical thinking was at the heart of the decision to create elea. The founders concluded that their contribution to meet a high threshold of responsibility would be to share the opportunities from glo- balization with those who, up to now, have not had access to them. When does the liberty of some negatively affect the liberty of others, and what can and should be done about it? These are issues related to the third ethical question: “What is just/fair among people?” The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously observed that freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. This question is likely the most con- troversial of the three to answer, and it is the one where those with an individualist stance on ethical thinking are usually in opposition to those with a collectivist one. At the core of the debate is the type and degree of equality between people that is considered to be acceptable from a justice/fairness point of view. The interest of economists, philosophers, and politicians in this topic has been increasing recently, given evidence of growing material inequality in several Western countries (particularly in the U.S.). 7 For most liberal thinkers, the equality of opportunity is at the forefront of concerns. Particularly when applying a world perspective, which is warranted in our global era, the biggest source of inequality of oppor- tunity – and the one that people can do the least about – is where one is