Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

Radical Business-transformation Strategies

An effective approach to this new age of opportunity requires not only dynamic management of innovation, but also a radical transformation in a number of critical areas of business life. Figure 17.1 lists nine such areas for which sustainable development has vitally important implications. We need here to see in what ways there are connections with sustainability arising out of the new set of assumptions and beliefs.

Vision of stewardship

For some time it has been widely recognized that companies benefit from published “mission statements.” Those that have been in existence for the past two decades would, in the majority of cases, place emphasis on developing the business to obtain growth and a high return on the investment of equity shareholders within a defined product or service sector. When development was constrained only by the limits set by the legal system, no more needed to be said to indicate recognition of other forms of restraint, such as those arising from the need to conserve certain types of material or plant species. When the quality of goods or services to be marketed was mentioned, reference might be made to the aim of being leaders in performance, style, or fashion, and perhaps to reliability and value for money. Seldom would there have been an explicit expression of ambition to be leaders in durability, repairability, or energy efficiency. There might have been an intention to be a dynamic and innovative company, but ...