Review by Peter Chadwick of IEDP: “…finding ways to innovate around these trade-offs can be a source of organizational resilience and transformation…”
Excerpt: “In her new book, The 360º Corporation, Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, suggests that achieving perfect shared value is unrealistic and that the shared value mindset can get in the way of truly doing the right thing. She argues that companies should accept that varied stakeholder demands create the need for real performance trade-offs, but on the other hand that finding ways to innovate around these trade-offs can be a source of organizational resilience and transformation….
Kaplan uses the 360º term in relation to the need to look at the stakeholders that surround the corporation from all directions. To consider how the perspectives of socially-conscious consumers, millennials, regulators and investors focused on ESG standards, et al, can be taken into account without compromising the bottom line.
She admits there are no easy answers. Although sometimes there are win-wins at other times companies just have to work around irreconcilable tensions. Crucially she says, by understanding the perspectives of different stakeholders, hard-pressed leaders can learn to tackle tensions created by trade-offs through creative thinking and innovation and often find new ways of doing business…”
Read full review here.
