Better Business - Better World 

 

     

    The 5th Joint Alumni Conference addresses the question of how enterprises and leaders drive the corporate bottom-line by creating strategies and innovation that are good for the world. Increasingly business leaders acknowledge that being a good corporate citizen is not just the right thing to do - it is also critical for business success. While the concept of Global Corporate Citizenship has been widely discussed at the World Economic Forum back in 2008 (click here), JAC 2011 will continue this discussion by putting a stronger emphasis on improving business leadership to outline how improved business practices drive simultaneously enterprise performance and the social good.
     

rch & Ideas

SuperCorp: Values as Guidance System

Published: August 24, 2009
Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Executive Summary:

In her new book SuperCorp, professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter details how vanguard companies such as IBM, Cemex, and Omron are rewriting the nature of the business enterprise and how firms will gain sustainable prosperity in the 21st century. Read our excerpt. Key concepts include:

  • Grounding strategy in a sense of wider societal purpose provides many significant advantages and only a few potential disadvantages.
  • Vanguard companies gain both a moral compass and an entire guidance system.
  • To be strategic, a principles-based initiative must contribute to the fundamental way the company makes money, with customers and clients in mind.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Many people today are focused on the global economic crisis, but Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter sees also a global crisis of business.

The model of American capitalism that worked so well to raise the fortunes of millions of people last century appears to have hit a wall. What's good for General Motors may no longer be good for the country. In its place must arise a new model of the company, one that serves society as well as rewarding shareholders and employees, Kanter argues in her new book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good.

She tells the stories of "vanguard companies" such as IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Cemex, Banco Real, and Omron that are rewriting what it means to be successful in the 21st century.

In this excerpt, Kanter explores how vanguard companies use values to guide business strategy.