Wikipedia says a business model "describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value - economic, social, or other forms of value ... including [its] purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies".
In the commercial world, therefore, the business model explains in significant measure the rationale against which teams are constructed to maximise profitability. This is an organisational design issue and managers are recruited and rewarded for the effectiveness with which they drive their teams of specialists to this end.
So, what happens when the legitimacy of an organisation's business model is called into question publicly for the "externalities" - carbon emissions, other forms of pollutant, noise, and so on - it imposes on others? What happens when the legitimacy of the actions of those installed to deliver its business plan is itself brought to book by public concerns over its actions? Most managers are not called on to question the business model they are recruited to execute. They are just following orders. Theirs is a classic Nuremberg defence.
That individual managers can be tainted individually to the detriment of their careers and reputations by their unthinking association with or support for a particularly unsavoury business model is not something we've yet seen. But it is coming. A journey towards sustainability dictates that individuals and their decisions must become publicly accountable in the cause of the greater good.
We may not yet know who at the level of the individual executive working for any major polluter - an energy generator, cement, plastics or agrichemicals manufacturer, say - is responsible for the decisions to crank up production of their organisation's toxic product.
We have not yet identified the marketing executive pricing the goods to sell more, more quickly, or the industrial chemist choosing a more poisonous chemical over a less noxious alternative on the basis of price.
Yet we will come to, if only because in the near future the adverse consequences of an insufficiently considerately thought-out business model, and the decisions of those whose actions in carrying it out result in intolerable environmental costs to the rest of us, will come to follow them.
In business a reputation is a precious thing. For ambitious managers, it is an asset to be preserved. No one likes finding their name on any list for the wrong reasons.
Yet the internet poses precisely that threat when the public goes digging. We are at the beginning of a protracted course of public education on just how businesses construct their business models to make money, and the external costs they impose in doing so. In years to come, what sustainability really means will become something much more easily enforced by the public will, and with it the culpability of those whose decisions would deny it.
Watch out, because if the incriminated polluter is you, even if you just lend money to someone who does the damage, the crowd will find you out, and it will follow you home.
In the commercial world, therefore, the business model explains in significant measure the rationale against which teams are constructed to maximise profitability. This is an organisational design issue and managers are recruited and rewarded for the effectiveness with which they drive their teams of specialists to this end.
So, what happens when the legitimacy of an organisation's business model is called into question publicly for the "externalities" - carbon emissions, other forms of pollutant, noise, and so on - it imposes on others? What happens when the legitimacy of the actions of those installed to deliver its business plan is itself brought to book by public concerns over its actions? Most managers are not called on to question the business model they are recruited to execute. They are just following orders. Theirs is a classic Nuremberg defence.
That individual managers can be tainted individually to the detriment of their careers and reputations by their unthinking association with or support for a particularly unsavoury business model is not something we've yet seen. But it is coming. A journey towards sustainability dictates that individuals and their decisions must become publicly accountable in the cause of the greater good.
We may not yet know who at the level of the individual executive working for any major polluter - an energy generator, cement, plastics or agrichemicals manufacturer, say - is responsible for the decisions to crank up production of their organisation's toxic product.
We have not yet identified the marketing executive pricing the goods to sell more, more quickly, or the industrial chemist choosing a more poisonous chemical over a less noxious alternative on the basis of price.
Yet we will come to, if only because in the near future the adverse consequences of an insufficiently considerately thought-out business model, and the decisions of those whose actions in carrying it out result in intolerable environmental costs to the rest of us, will come to follow them.
In business a reputation is a precious thing. For ambitious managers, it is an asset to be preserved. No one likes finding their name on any list for the wrong reasons.
Yet the internet poses precisely that threat when the public goes digging. We are at the beginning of a protracted course of public education on just how businesses construct their business models to make money, and the external costs they impose in doing so. In years to come, what sustainability really means will become something much more easily enforced by the public will, and with it the culpability of those whose decisions would deny it.
Watch out, because if the incriminated polluter is you, even if you just lend money to someone who does the damage, the crowd will find you out, and it will follow you home.
Comments