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.

 

Issues

Tags

Sustainability Climate change Stewardship leadership Governance ClimateChange Investment Talent Values CSR Carbon ShoreBank Copenhagen ClimateChangeBrie... Trust
View More»

Related Content
Subscribe to RSS

  Sort by : Title   Date Sort

ratingratingratingratingrating
posted by David  on July 18, 2011
In 1944, FD Roosevelt proposed a new Bill of Rights.  Due to his untimely death it was never progressed.  Perhaps it is time to pick up his ideas once again. 
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Embedding Values , How to be a Force for Good company , What is a Force for Good company? , Tomorrow's Global Talent , Corporate Social Responsibility , Sustainability , Global Financial Crisis , Responsible Investment , Tomorrow's Owners , Tomorrow's Value Lecture Series , Tomorrow's Adaptive Organisation , Family Business Stewardship , Tomorrow's Stewardship , Why Stewardship Matters , Stewardship Campaign

Region(s): North America , Central America , South America , Caribbean , West Europe , Africa , East Europe & Former Soviet Union , Middle East , South Asia , East Asia , Southeast Asia , Australia and South Pacific

Tag(s): Leadership , Stewardship , Trust , Values
ratingratingratingratingrating
posted by Jeff  on April 23, 2011
Few writers have devoted more time to the everalsting conflict between Good and Evil, War and Peace, Love and Violence than Leo Tolstoy and it was in helping a friend compile a book on Malcolm Muggeridge that I first discovered the story of the Green Stick.  What I  also learned of Muggeridge was his endeavours in the 1930s to report on Stalin's man made Famine which he described as  "“one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely believe it ever happened.”.  It was an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. One of my favourite extracts from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, is the scene where two youths report to their master having been robbed. The lesson learned is that "We affirm the good in man through trust and deal with evil through strength". That we should not seek reward in striving for an ideal. but that trust can lead to love.  Our own experience was to discover the story which was to become know as 'Death...
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Embedding Values , What is a Force for Good company? , Social Business , Tomorrow's Value Lecture Series

Region(s): East Europe & Former Soviet Union

Tag(s): disabled , orphans , social business
ratingratingratingratingrating
posted by Admin  on December 18, 2009
National Conference -National HRD NetworkMumbaiNov 25, 2009 The following article is Anand Mahindra’s superb address given to the National HRD Network in Mumbai – a gathering of hundreds of the nation’s business and HR leaders.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Embedding Values , Creating Frameworks , Tomorrow's Global Leaders , Global Financial Crisis , Tomorrow's Owners

  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

  Showing 1-1 of 1