|
Guiding Statement
We aim to provide a mutually co-operative framework for local social entrepreneurs to work together on developing members products and services, both for their own benefit and for the benefit of the wider community. ESTA seeks to play a positive role in creating prosperity for individuals, organisations and the wider community, and strongly supports attempts to do so in a sustainable manner. (See information on our Quadruple Bottom Lines for more details). Main Activity
ESTA was founded in 2009 by Michael Hallam, and formally incorporated as a Community Interest Company in July 2010. ESTA CIC runs a Business Club for businesses, freelancers, community and educational organisations within the Lancaster and Morecambe area. |
|
Aims and Objectives
The general membership of ESTA is made up of sole traders, small businesses, local social enterprises, community and educational organisations. Members are encouraged to collaborate, where practically possible, to create and generate local business opportunities which benefit not only the members but also the wider community. Encouraging Collaboration ESTA members are encouraged to try to work with each other, rather than against (in competition) with each other. Whilst we recognise that the competitive drive plays an important role in the development of healthy choices and service options, out experience has taught us that encouraging collaboration and co-operation, entered into freely, is a very efficient way of creating needed goods and services. |
|
|
ESTA’S Principles: The Four Bottom Lines
ESTA seeks to be a model of best practice in how to run a successful, resilient, environmentally and socially responsible local business network. As a condition of joining ESTA, members agree to try and make ongoing improvements in the way their business activities affect and contribute to environmental sustainability, community well-being and the ongoing personal well-being and self-development of everyone who comes into contact with the business. This is in addition to your businesses financial success, which we also want to strongly support. |
Rather than being additional business burdens; cultivating a positive relationship to the environment, society and the personal well-being of every individual, can greatly enhance the success of your business.
Encouraging Wealth Creation without damaging the society or environment in which we live
The collaborative and mutually supportive nature of ESTA means that we wish to foster mutual trust and cooperation among our members and the wider public. Opportunities for collaboration and mutual product and service development are actively encouraged and form a core aspect of our work together.
ESTA seeks to serve as a forum for general skill sharing and capacity building, preferring to share expertise for the benefit of all rather than restrict it for personal strategic competitive advantage. Our belief is that markets can be grown and matured when consumers, traders and suppliers collaborate in the development of markets and the identification of needs. This is especially true in the global drive to create mature environmentally sustainable markets, in which the biological carrying capacity of the Earth is respected and in which human economic activity serves to more closely adapt to and mirror the re-generative processes evolved in the natural world.
At ESTA, therefore, we believe that the principles of enlightened cooperation provide a far more potentially efficient business model than the single profit-driven bottom line, with its attendant fixation on competition over all things. The living earth, in which our economy and society is embedded, is the source of all added value with respect to the work that we all do. Battling against Natures ability to provide is, in the long term, a futile and bankrupt business strategy.
Consequently ESTA seeks to play its role in the wider resurgence of Social Enterprise in encouraging and training small business social entrepreneurs to actively create a more cooperative, life-enhancing more efficient and more profitable way of working, so that as many as possible can fruitfully benefit from their labours.
The collaborative and mutually supportive nature of ESTA means that we wish to foster mutual trust and cooperation among our members and the wider public. Opportunities for collaboration and mutual product and service development are actively encouraged and form a core aspect of our work together.
ESTA seeks to serve as a forum for general skill sharing and capacity building, preferring to share expertise for the benefit of all rather than restrict it for personal strategic competitive advantage. Our belief is that markets can be grown and matured when consumers, traders and suppliers collaborate in the development of markets and the identification of needs. This is especially true in the global drive to create mature environmentally sustainable markets, in which the biological carrying capacity of the Earth is respected and in which human economic activity serves to more closely adapt to and mirror the re-generative processes evolved in the natural world.
At ESTA, therefore, we believe that the principles of enlightened cooperation provide a far more potentially efficient business model than the single profit-driven bottom line, with its attendant fixation on competition over all things. The living earth, in which our economy and society is embedded, is the source of all added value with respect to the work that we all do. Battling against Natures ability to provide is, in the long term, a futile and bankrupt business strategy.
Consequently ESTA seeks to play its role in the wider resurgence of Social Enterprise in encouraging and training small business social entrepreneurs to actively create a more cooperative, life-enhancing more efficient and more profitable way of working, so that as many as possible can fruitfully benefit from their labours.
|
Building Good Relationships: Member Guidelines
A strong civil and business community is built out of developing good and reliable relationships between people. Therefore, a lot of effort is put into encouraging positive relationship building within the ESTA Community. Building relationships takes time and, just because someone joins ESTA does not mean it can be automatically assumed that they are a good person to work with. Members and the wider public must form their own judgements based upon their own encounters and experience. |
|
Because ESTA also want to encourage its members to take self-responsibility for their own actions and for pursuing their own initiatives, there is a desire to avoid rigid guidelines, with their tendency to stifle individual creativity and initiative. Therefore ESTA, as an organisation, seeks to promote general guidelines.
Consequently, if there is a dispute, disagreement or clash of objectives amongst ESTA members they are advised to work these through in a way which is designed to lead to the best outcome for everyone involved.
ESTA provides some guidelines to support this but, at the end of the day, it is up to all parties to take responsibility for their own actions, conduct, learning and development.
The Ethical Small Traders Association encourages its members to find ways of cooperating and creatively collaborating with each other, rather than reverting to the default ‘business mode’ of seeking to compete against each other. Not least because the long term business success of unfettered competition is questionable.
Consequently, if there is a dispute, disagreement or clash of objectives amongst ESTA members they are advised to work these through in a way which is designed to lead to the best outcome for everyone involved.
ESTA provides some guidelines to support this but, at the end of the day, it is up to all parties to take responsibility for their own actions, conduct, learning and development.
The Ethical Small Traders Association encourages its members to find ways of cooperating and creatively collaborating with each other, rather than reverting to the default ‘business mode’ of seeking to compete against each other. Not least because the long term business success of unfettered competition is questionable.