Impact of Globalization LO27851

From: PODOLSKY,JOE (HP-Cupertino,ex1) (joe_podolsky@hp.com)
Date: 02/15/02


Replying to LO27837 --

One of our challenges as an industrial civilization is to measure the
right things. It's not just a matter of extending our reach beyond the
industrialize populations. Here at HP we have an informal community, led
by some people in HP Labs, who worry about planetary sustainability. In a
newsletter distributed this week, they recommended that we all read Paul
Hawkens book "Natural Capitalism." You can see a 1997 Mother Jones
article by Hawkens on this subject at

   http://bsd.mojones.com/mother_jones/MA97/hawken.html

One of his major points is that all of our micro and macro economic
metrics assume that key resources like clean air and clean water are
infinitely abundant and free. Hawkens argues that, even if this were true
once, it is not now, and we need new accounting policies and principles in
order to calculate both economic investment and return so that both
managers and investors can make responsible choices on how to conduct and
evaluate business operations.

Some might say, correctly, that inclusion and sustainability are so basic
that we should do them, not only as business basics, but as human basics.
Be that as it may, Bill Hewlett was dead on when he used to say that if
you knew how a person was measured, you'd know how that person would
behave. Getting the right numbers is a problem that extends far beyond
Enron.

Joe

joe_podolsky@hp.com

> As someone who coined the term World Class Branding back in
> 1989!, I argue
> that global companies should promote these things (divert
> some of their ad
> budgets, require more of their leader's attention to live this vision,
> require more of their partners) to the marginal cost of
> transferring their
> knowledge amongst poor human communities who are in their
> midst as soon as
> they start doing business in the 2nd world; and then when I say that's
> measurably good business (not to do this will destroy your reputation,
> will destroy your integrity, your value productivity and
> ultimately the
> more direct demands other stakeholders appear to make) I'm
> told that I'm
> talking altruism, or that I should go look at CSR sites, and I feel it
> should be more measurable, actionable at the top and core of
> the company
> and I would also like to hear people's opinions is the WEF declaration
> (and its 30 or so corporate signatories) for real actions or just PR
> http://www.weforum.org/pdf/CSR/Final_Statement.pdf
>
> If this stuff is real, why don't we set up some performance standards
> benchmarking program to narrow this gap (its greater than
> quality gap ever
> was) but we could use that model to share learning curves ,
> couldnt we?
> Why didnt the global-social link get made last year when
> Brookings brought
> out their wake-up report "Unseen Wealth" on corporate measurement and
> called for corporates and government involvement as did our
> EU over here
> ""We are competing in a 21st century economy. Our
> institutions are still
> working under frameworks and mindsets that derive from the
> 19th century.
> This imbalance is growing by the day, and needs to be
> addressed quickly.".

-- 

"PODOLSKY,JOE (HP-Cupertino,ex1)" <joe_podolsky@hp.com>

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