The Quakers led the way in some of the most enlightened and purposeful companies that Britain has had over the past 200 years. Companies such Cadbury, Clarks, Fry’s, and Rowntree’s were iconic in their days in creating not only enlightened but also commercially successful businesses, in some cases, as in Cadbury and Rowntree’s, providing housing for their employees. The Quakers introduced one of the most important commercial innovations of all times, fixed-price contracts, to replace the haggling they abhorred, to ensure that all men who were equal in the face of God were treated equally in the market place.
Are there lessons to be learnt from the Quaker family businesses of the past for business today? The answer is yes but not in the way in which one might expect. It is not that we can or should seek a revival of the types of businesses that the Quakers promoted. Indeed if survival is an indicator of success then the Quaker companies have been a failure. Most of them went out of business or were taken over, and those that have survived, such as Barclays and Lloyds Bank, are not today universally regarded as paragons of virtue.
Philanthropy does not feature in a world where ownership and management is no longer in the hands of enlightened families but instead dispersed amongst a large number of institutional investors solely concerned about financial returns for their investors. Enlightened capitalism will have to be profitable if it is to flourish. It will have to generate benefits for investors as well as society. It will have to rekindle the flame which drove the Quakers—that treating people fairly and well is good business.
This is where the Quaker experience has valuable lessons for today in teaching us about the importance of engaging in commercial innovations, such as fixed-price contracts and housing for employees, that fundamentally altered conventions and practices of their time. The Quaker firms became models for business around the world because they demonstrated by example how enlightened business was a highly profitable innovation in business practice.