Changing Your Company from the Inside Out

CHAPTER SIX

Who: Understanding Social Networks

Shortly after accounting giants Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged in 1998, a pair of young interns based in London—Amy Middleberg from the United States and New Zealander James Shaw—were asked their thoughts on what kind of values should guide the newly christened PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).¹ They took the challenge seriously and proposed a bold idea—for PwC to become in essence a triple-bottom-line business that measured not just financial performance, but social and environmental performance as well. Moreover, they believed that PwC could begin by creating a social audit that drew on the accounting firm’s core competencies and that could serve clients aiming to track their own social ...