Inbrief

Businesses wishing to be sustainable have to throw off their ‘addiction’ to growth, says Roger Steare, corporate philosopher in residence at London’s Cass Business School. Steare told the Business in the Community Ireland annual conference that ‘sustainability is incompatible with growth’ and that ‘growth is like a cancer cell which kills the host’. Steare, who argued that public limited companies could resist the growth urge by de-listing from the stock exchange, said: ‘Business needs to progress away from the childish addiction to more.’

Marks & Spencer chairman Stuart Rose agreed with Steare in principle, but not in practice. ‘I’d have loved to have de-listed, but it wasn’t financially do-able,’ he said.