B Corp, the well-known brand and certification granted to socially responsible businesses, has moved into the spotlight as more and more companies consider how they might restructure their operations to create a more-sustainable business ecosystem. Today, B Lab, the brand’s nonprofit evaluation entity, has certified more than 4,000 companies (including large, global companies) across 77 countries as B Corps, and is working hard to build a community of entrepreneurs that improves through mutual encouragement, cooperation, and information sharing. It sees a need to develop a standard and model of management practice under the new business environment of the 21st century, and to systemize cooperation for global expansion.

Amid these developments, the number of companies obtaining B Corp certification is gradually on the rise in South Korea. Seventeen Korean companies have been certified as B Corps to date, starting with a forest-building social venture Tree Planet in 2013. One or two companies have obtained B Corp certification each year since then, and seven companies have been newly certified in the past three years. But while this implies increasing interest among Korean companies, the movement within South Korea remains disappointingly trivial both compared to the global trend and in light of the region’s strong interest in sustainability and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG).

To draw more Korean companies into the movement, business leaders and the B Corp system itself must overcome four main limiting factors. These include a lack of awareness of its benefits, weak correlation between certification and financial integrity, ambiguity around the role of B Lab Korea (the Korean partner institution of B Lab), and insufficient attention to cultural differences and local contexts. Here’s a closer look at each of these limitations, as well as ideas for how the field might move beyond them.

Read the full article about the B Corp movement by Hyun Shin, Yumin Jo, and Daum Lee at Stanford Social Innovation Review.