Summary

The Tomorrow’s Global Company Inquiry examined what it would take for the global company of the future to survive and prosper.  One key theme it found was that successful companies should expand their view of success and redefine it in terms of lasting positive impacts for business, society, and environment.

 

On the fifth of January 2009 Tomorrow’s Company and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales soft launched ‘beyond accounting’, a programme of dialogue and discussion, which looks at the best practice for ensuring that ‘non-financial’ impacts on business are fully incorporated into business strategy.  As the HRH the Prince of Wales said in December 2008, a vital part of businesses incorporating the wider and long term consequences of their actions “is better information, and better and more comprehensive approaches to measurement”.  We hope that, in time this program will be broadened to include detailed research to build on some work undertaken by Grahame Hubbard of Adelaide University.

 

Those new definitions of success then become the basis for strategy and decision making, as well as performance measurement and reporting and external communication.

 

You can click here to read that section of the report, here for more on the beyond accounting program, or here to find out more about the report as a whole.

 

If you wish to view, comment or write blogs on this issue please click here, for resources on this issue see below.

 

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posted by Admin  on January 22, 2008
The debate surrounding CSR has intensified over the last few years and now in some quarters there is a backlash against CSR. This debate article looks at where we are today and what Tomorrow's Company believes companies need to focus on for the future. For more information visit www.tomorrowscompany.com
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Corporate Social Responsibility

Tag(s): CSR , Tomorrow'sCompany , UNPRI , YoungPresidents
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posted by Admin  on June 19, 2008
Date: July 2007A snapshot on how the Principles for Responsible Investment came about, and views of leading thinkers in the field of sustainable finance and responsible investment.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Embedding Values , Creating Frameworks , How to be a Force for Good company , Global Financial Crisis

Tag(s): ResponsibleInvestment , SustainableFinance
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posted by Admin  on June 19, 2008
Date: April 2006 A set of global best-practices for responsible investment.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , How to be a Force for Good company

Tag(s): ResponsibleInvestment , SustainableFinance
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posted by Admin  on June 24, 2008
Date: June 2008Muhammad Yunus talks to students at MIT about Grameen, how social businesses work, and tells them that "each of you has the power to change the world"
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Tomorrow's Global Leaders , What is a Force for Good company?

Tag(s): MIT , SocialBusiness , Yunus
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posted by Admin  on July 10, 2008
At a time when much of the world is facing freshwater stress and scarcity, the Coca-Cola Company's is aiming to become water neutral - to replace every drop of water used in its manufacturing processes.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Creating Frameworks , Why we need Force for Good companies , How to be a Force for Good company , What is a Force for Good company? , Tomorrow's Green Economy

Tag(s): CEOWaterMandate , Coca-Cola , Resources , Stewardship , Sustainability , UNGlobalCompact , Water , WWF

  Showing 1-5 of 21

CommentsPost New Comment
REDEFINING SUCCESS BEYOND ACCOUNTING
Accountants have been refining the old methods of accounting ever since the double entry bookkeeping was invented in the fifteenth century. The time is now right to ask whether we have been measuring the right things in the right way and communicating them appropriately to the right people.
“What measures truly predict long-term financial success in our businesses?”
As we face profound challenges for people, profit and planet alike, our need for an effective and ‘fit for purpose’ compass to plot a sustainable and successful course for the future has never been more urgent or important.
Grafting new measures onto the old accounting-driven performance system or making slight adjustments in the existing in the existing incentives accomplishes little.
With time there is increasing awareness that what was once considered a management fad has now strengthened its roots many thanks to the growing understanding of the need to save our planet. But organizations and companies should think about the people and the employees? How long would firms make people trade their freedom for money duping them with an environment fit for the body but one which confines their mind by means of mechanical job descriptions, fostering assembly-line thinking?
Understandably, early proponents of assembly line structures were wooed by cost-reducing methods to boost efficiency and profits thus they could not see its detrimental consequences on the society. But as human knowledge expands and as experience has shown, there is plenty of evidence which proves that robotic work behavior is playing havoc with the very fabric of society by means of dehumanizing people.
Society is increasingly demanding that businesses take account of their impacts but also recognizes that they have a strong positive role to play as well. Business, society and the environment are inextricably linked and inter-dependent for their survival and must be held in balance.
So a firm should take into consideration defining success in away that integrates the social, environmental and financial aspects of their work. Commercial success should go in hand in hand with the taking over the shared challenges such as environmental degradation, poverty and the abuse of human rights.


AMRUTA KAPOOR,INDIRA SCHOOL OF BUSINEES STUDIES,PUNE,INDIA
Posted By : Amrita Kapoor
Posted on : November 24, 2009

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