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 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
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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 November 13, 2008
The affordability of pensions and how they are to be funded must be looked at in the light of the nation’s long-term economic and social objectives.  In this context, the terms ‘support’ and ‘dependence’ are used and measured in an unhelpful way that incorrectly assumes a one-way relationship.  The elderly are depicted as dependent ‘takers’, but they also support the economy and society through paying taxes and voluntary activities. Instead of looking at the ‘old age support ratio’ policymakers should focus on the ‘total economic support ratio’, which relates the number of people who are working to the numbers not working.  This was 0.48 in 2003 and is projected to decline to 0.45 by 2041.  At this point it will be almost the same as it was in 1961.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Creating Frameworks , Global Financial Crisis

Tag(s): PastPublications , Tomorrow'sCompany
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posted by Aditi  on September 11, 2008
 Social Business and Social enterprise examples from around the world - Divine Chocolate.Bringing together cocoa farmers in Ghana to consumers in Europe and North America in an effort to promote healthy, sustainable, fair and value based enterprise, Divine is definitely a force for good.
     

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

Region(s): North America , West Europe , Africa , East Europe & Former Soviet Union

Tag(s): SocialBusiness
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posted by Sunil  on December 30, 2008
How an interdependent approach to leveraging globalisation will create a business culture that's sustainable and fair to all. A key ingredient for building the firm of the future is the setting up of a culture that can evolve, sustain and grow. Relationships, learning, adapting, evolving – simple to use words – not so simple to understand or, for that matter, apply in a particular context. For one, the mechanistic worldview [what became the order in the Industrial era] suggests the need for rigid structures. Today’s realities are quite different. Relationships are being formed without any physical contact: very deep relationships are being founded on areas of common interest.
     

Issue(s): Redefining Success - beyond accounting , Embedding Values , Creating Frameworks , Tomorrow's Global Talent

Tag(s): Business , Culture

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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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