New book takes a practice-oriented look at corporate citizenship, and uses real, behind the scenes examples from well-known companies to show that, for many firms, social responsibility is becoming more integrated into corporate strategy.
Most would agree that business creates or exacerbates many of the world’s biggest problems. Can business also solve them?
This is the defining question of an era when corporations have become the dominant global institution and problems such as climate change, a growing rich-poor gap, an obesity pandemic, and disillusionment with rapacious profit-taking cry out for a new way of doing business.
Frankly, the majority of companies are ducking this call for action. Even the "good companies" are only nibbling at the margins through the tools of philanthropy, stakeholder consultation, and community involvement.
But a vanguard is beginning to apply managerial know-how, marketing savvy, and commercial acumen to problems that have been heretofore pigeon-holed under the labels of corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
In Beyond Good Company: Next Generation Corporate Citizenship, authors Bradley Googins, Philip Mirvis and Steven Rochlin present a clear-eyed and compelling case that an increasing number of companies and their values-driven leaders are redefining the business-of-business today.
General Electric, IBM, Unilever, AMD, CEMEX, Levi Strauss & Co., Green Mountain Coffee Growers, and select others – all on a path toward next generation corporate citizenship – are making a business out of making a better world.
Neither critic of nor cheerleader for business, Beyond Good Company looks at the forces driving this transformation of the strategic corporate agenda, describes how it engages employees, customers, suppliers, and nongovernmental organizations in new roles, and provides practical illustrations of what it takes to deliver real value for business and society.
