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 June 2, 2008

A short video, sponsored by BT, about the Tomorrow's Global Company inquiry report. It includes interviews with a number of the orginal Inquiry Team who were involved in writing the report.
     
Playing Time: 06:16 (format: mm:ss)

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posted by Admin  on July 1, 2008

Rio Earth Summit, 1992A thirteen year old girl speaks to the UN with passion, conviction, and unbreakable logic about the harm that we are doing to the planet we live on and the need to do something different.As I post this video on to the Force for Good website, that was 16 years ago. The 13 year old girl is now 29, and things have got worse, not better.This is why we need companies to be a force for good. This is why companies themselves need to become a force for good.
     
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posted by Admin  on July 25, 2008

Nandan Nilekani reflects on a year since the launch of Tomorrow's Global Company and the impact of the report. In particular he talks about how it has helped Infosys to moved forward in its reporting along GRI lines and working with the Government and the colleges to create a common policy framework around education.
     
Playing Time: 03:57 (format: mm:ss)

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posted by Fraser  on October 27, 2008

Proposed cuts by the US, EU, China etc are 75% below those required. This is a short to try and help inspire people to go beyond the norm. Made by Fraser DurhamMusic by Alexi Murdoch
     
Playing Time: 01:60 (format: mm:ss)

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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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