Structuring for Action and Longevity in the Green Economy : Being Intentional About Committing to Social/Green Purposes, Connecting Effort and Impact, and Addressing Harm and Accountability

Demand and opportunities for combining pursuit of profit and social, green impact are increasing. The public sector and both aspects of the private sector – for-profit business and tax exempt, charitable enterprises – are interested in doing more and better. That includes both sectors seeking to leverage the benefits of what each can bring to an endeavor through cross-sector collaborations and ventures.While originating with interests that complement each other and even overlap, these hybrid pursuits – financial and social impact, public and private operations – involve interests or depth of intentionality that inevitably will collide and ricochet. There are bound to be disagreements, even under the best of circumstances when those involved act with the best of intentions.Until recently, there were no frameworks within which policy makers might use policy levers to reconcile, encourage, or discourage approaches to resolving such conflicts. Nor were there frameworks by which practitioners – legal, investors, entrepreneurs, and others – could understand their own expectations or those of others in order to identify and exploit areas of convergence and to prepare for areas of divergence.This article expands on four recently introduced frameworks for identifying and managing complementary, competing, and conflicting interests and objectives and the depth of commitment to them as follows: • Degree and depths of commitment to social purposes or the lack thereof; • Importance of connections between the effort being put forth and the social impact or results to be achieved; • Whether and how to address direct, indirect, knowable and unintended harms; and • Relevance of accountability and whether to rely on business owners, social/public engagement, and/or legal causes of action and remedies.These frameworks (or something like them) usefully function independently, but they also inter-relate and operate together. The essence of this article is posit how the above frameworks can intersect to identify the areas in which policy makers should and should not make policy concessions for given efforts (e.g., compromise fiduciary duties, provide tax incentives or bid procurement preferences, exempt from securities laws, etc.). This article aids practitioners by helping them identify their own (or their clients') substantive expectations, those of others, and where overlap can be advantageous and where disparities are likely to become costly diversions