Business executive • MAY 11
The “SuperCorp” F
Rosabeth Moss Kanter introduces the types of business that will shape the future
or years, lip service has been paid by many corporate leaders to achieving high performance and being a good corporate citizen. What I have discovered in my
ROsABetH MOss KAnteR is the Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School and chair of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. Dr Kanter’s strategic and practical insights have guided business leaders worldwide for more than 25 years. A former editor of Harvard Business Review, she is recognised as one of the most profound management thinkers of our day.
research, however, is that two issues, business performance and societal contributions, are closely connected. Service to society, guided by well-communicated values, is not just “nice to do”. It is an integral part of the business models for companies that I call the vanguard. These companies use their unique strengths to provide innovative new solutions to social challenges such as: early childhood education, water safety and sanitation, employment for people with disabilities, small business development, energy conservation, and disaster relief. Social initiatives such as these, which are undertaken without direct profit motives, are part of the culture that builds high performance and thus results in profits. These companies attempt to raise social and environmental standards in the countries in which they operate and they derive benefits in both innovation and in the way in which they do business. This is aspirational; even the best companies do not meet their ideals all the time, and they do not do it perfectly – they have vulnerabilities and blind spots and can be swamped in bureaucracy. But they live up to high aspirations often enough to put them in the vanguard of a new model for business. The waves of globalisation have caused enormous turbulence everywhere, in growth regions as well as in mature societies. The vanguard companies have mastered the turbulence of technological and geopolitical change by making critical internal changes from which other companies can learn. They have shared their business capabilities to produce social innovations from which the general public have benefited. Turnarounds are based on psychology as well as economics; people must have confidence that positive outcomes are possible before they invest their money, effort, or loyalty. The good conduct of vanguard companies provides optimism about the future – that there are many companies in the world doing the right thing and doing it with a sense of mission, delivering what their customers want in a way that is significantly better than their competition. The vanguard enterprises form the new direction for business in the future. Companies, successful and prosperous in their own right, are forces for good in communities and the wider world. They are role models with
much to teach, including: l How to build a long term culture that enables continual change and renewal, as well as rapid response to crises;
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l How to use values and principles as a guidance system for control;
l How the innovation process can be enhanced by a strong social purpose and connections with society;
l How people-centred approaches can smooth the tensions of mergers and create productive new collaborations;
l How workplaces can use the tools and approaches of the digital age, including working from home and self-organised social networks. These unleash employee energy for both daily tasks and making a difference in the world;
l How diverse people can be encouraged to find common ground and express rather than suppress their identities;
l How community service can build relationships and reputations and how businesses can contribute to public programmes;
l How to minimise the negative consequences of globalisation, involve companies in helping with social problems and understanding the limits of reliance on the private sector, and
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