Responsibility: The new business imperative

Executive Overview Businesses today are experiencing profound pressures to reform and improve stakeholder-related practices and their impacts on stakeholders and the natural environment--in short, to manage responsibly as well as profitably. Pressures for expanding the emphasis on profits to managing responsibly derive from three general sources: primary stakeholders such as owners, employees, customers, and suppliers; secondary stakeholders such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists, communities, and governments; and general societal trends and institutional forces. The latter include a proliferation of 'best of' rankings, the steady emergence and development of global principles and standards…