World’s best are moving towards sustainable business - SLINTEC
CEO
Ramani KANGARAARACHCHI
Today a major shift from the single bottom line shareholder value
creating mindset to the triple bottom line stakeholder engagement based
sustainable value creation mindset is needed at board level in
companies.
|
Ravi Fernando |
This evolution of business refers to organizations embracing the need
for both economic, social and environmental value creation focused on
the triple bottom, Sri Lanka Institute of Nanotechnology, CEO Ravi
Fernando told the CIMA Symposium at Hotel Cinnamon Lakeside yesterday.
He was speaking on the emerging paradigm for sustainable business and
enterprise governance under Strategic Corporate Sustainability. He said
that sustainable business is increasingly becoming the aspiration of all
business and the world’s best are all moving in the direction of
sustainable business as they know stakeholders and the emerging ethical
consumer have begun to demand that Corporate Responsibility is a
business commitment to sustainable business. It is a shift from creating
economic value for shareholders to creating sustainable value for
stakeholders and it refers to migration from the focus of creating
economic profit at any cost to triple bottom.
|
The panel discussion in progress at the CIMA Technical
Symposium 2009 |
Fernando said that the boards need to take on four main tasks to
facilitate strategic corporate sustainability - namely policy
formulation, strategic thinking, supervision of management and
accountability.
The emerging paradigm for sustainable business which is increasingly
being embraced but has yet to be articulated is the concept of strategic
corporate sustainability as an approach for business to integrate
corporate responsibility, corporate strategy and sustainable business
strategy, he said.
The 21st century will have only two types of business.
Firstly, business where enlightened boards have understood the new
paradigm and embedded stakeholder, triple bottom line mindsets in the
business through strategic corporate sustainability and business where
boards continue to focus on corporate and enterprise governance on the
old paradigm of shareholder value creation, he said. |
