Based on professor Sarah Kaplan’s Rotman business school course, The 360° Corporation offers us a new way of understanding modern business. Trade-offs can’t be avoided, especially in today’s socially conscious environment—so how do we deal with them?
Different stakeholders want different things. Millennials want to work for companies that share their social values. Investors want to support environmentally conscious companies. And consumers want products that are both ethically made and inexpensive. So how do organizations deal with these pressures—especially when they conflict with financial performance?
“Addressing these paradoxes is at the heart of [Sarah] Kaplan’s book, a guide that aims to topple economist Milton Friedman’s dictum that ‘the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits,’” writes The Financial Times. “Instead, Kaplan urges us ‘to look at the stakeholders that surround companies from all directions, all 360 degrees,’ from the workers in a clothes factory to the community exposed to its waste products. Only then, Kaplan argues, will companies be able to consider innovative ways to respond to these seemingly intractable trade-offs.”
With a solid structure, thorough research, and rich case studies, Kaplan’s book is “full of nuggets that will fascinate leaders, both established and inspiring.”
Read the full review, here.
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