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John C Knapp (ed). Hardback. 174 pages. Praeger. £25.95/$44.95
It may be relatively slim, but this examination of ‘the ethical requirements of leadership’ is a heavyweight tome in terms of the stature of its contributors, who include the former US president Jimmy Carter and Northern Ireland’s Nobel peace prize winner John Hume.
However, while the views of such luminaries make interesting reading, it is a chapter by a slightly lesser light, Ray Anderson, that stands out as most useful for CSR practitioners.
Anderson is the founder and chairman of Interface, the US-based carpet manufacturer that is widely acknowledged as one of the world leaders on corporate responsibility. In his chapter, Business leadership for the greater good, he tells of the moment in his company’s 22nd year that led him to transform the business.
It’s an entertaining story in which Anderson describes how the book that brought about his overnight change of heart, Paul Hawken’s The ecology of commerce, caused him not only to weep on the spot, but to create a seven-point plan for his company to ‘climb Mount Sustainability’. Point six, he recalls, was to engineer a programme to sensitize his employees and suppliers to CSR issues. Point seven was to completely redesign the way his company went about commerce – with dramatic and profitable results.
Anderson, who says that he is a ‘recovering plunderer’, has written in more detail elsewhere about how he changed his business. But this neat summary gets to the nitty gritty of how to make a company think differently. Something, perhaps, to drop into your CEO’s in-tray.
Peter Mason
It may be relatively slim, but this examination of ‘the ethical requirements of leadership’ is a heavyweight tome in terms of the stature of its contributors, who include the former US president Jimmy Carter and Northern Ireland’s Nobel peace prize winner John Hume.
However, while the views of such luminaries make interesting reading, it is a chapter by a slightly lesser light, Ray Anderson, that stands out as most useful for CSR practitioners.
Anderson is the founder and chairman of Interface, the US-based carpet manufacturer that is widely acknowledged as one of the world leaders on corporate responsibility. In his chapter, Business leadership for the greater good, he tells of the moment in his company’s 22nd year that led him to transform the business.
It’s an entertaining story in which Anderson describes how the book that brought about his overnight change of heart, Paul Hawken’s The ecology of commerce, caused him not only to weep on the spot, but to create a seven-point plan for his company to ‘climb Mount Sustainability’. Point six, he recalls, was to engineer a programme to sensitize his employees and suppliers to CSR issues. Point seven was to completely redesign the way his company went about commerce – with dramatic and profitable results.
Anderson, who says that he is a ‘recovering plunderer’, has written in more detail elsewhere about how he changed his business. But this neat summary gets to the nitty gritty of how to make a company think differently. Something, perhaps, to drop into your CEO’s in-tray.
Peter Mason
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