Giving Compass' Take:

• B the Change shares some thoughts from four companies honored with the 2018 Best For the World: Governance list, discussing how each company's actions aligned with its mission.

• What can other companies and NGOs learn from the companies mentioned in this piece, such as the financial transparency of dojo4 or the co-ownership practices of Amicus Solar Cooperative?

• Here are three ways to activate your own CSR mission.

In May, B Lab announced its 2018 Best For The World  —  a list of the companies leading the way to redefine success in business. In addition to the “Best For” Overall list of honorees, there are subcategories for Community, Customers, Workers, Environment, and Governance.

To earn placement on the Best For The World: Governance list, honorees must score in the top 10 percent of B Corps in the Governance section of the B Impact Assessment (BIA). This section evaluates a company’s overall mission, ethics, accountability and transparency. It measures whether the company has adopted a social or environmental mission, and how it engages its employees, board members and the community to achieve that mission.

I believe that two practices in particular — self-management and employee ownership  —  often catalyze and support good governance. So I decided to ask a few of the BFTW: Governance winners why they thought they made the list.

First, I checked in with Christina Forwood, director of the Standards Review team at B Lab, to see whether and how self-management and employee ownership show up in the BIA.

“All Certified B Corporations meeting the legal requirement for certification are required to consider the interests of all stakeholders, including employees, by baking stakeholder consideration into the DNA of the company,” Forwood says. “Cooperatives are a points-earning governance model as a structure that requires stakeholder consideration. Note that not all cooperatives are formed as cooperative legal entities.”

Read the full article about the path to great governance by Pete Dignan at B the Change.