I have come across an excellent article in the September 2009 Harvard Business Review, by Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies, Professor James Gustave Speth, entitled ' Doing Business in a Post growth Society' (http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/09/doing-business-in-a-postgrowth-society/ar/1).
"It challenges the popular notion that economic growth is never ending, and that good business requires this growth to always be taking place.
Just as unlimited population expansion is untenable, so is unlimited GDP growth. Yet the open-ended commitment to economic growth persists, and it is now creating more problems than it is solving. It undermines jobs, communities, the environment, a sense of place and continuity, and even mental health. It fuels a ruthless international search for energy and other resources, and it rests on a consumerism that is manufactured by marketers and failing to meet the deepest human needs."
How many more laptops, cellphones and new cars can our planet sustain? How many more dot com fantasies, telco start-ups and low cost airlines can our planet sustain? How many more global rugby tours by beer swilling paunchy managers? How many contrived BEE deals leading to uber conspicuous consumption and zero social good?
I don't have the answers, but at least we are starting to ask the right kind of questions, and questioning the narrative of ever sustainable growth at the expense of everything we hold to be important.
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Thanks for a new blog to read Steve. Looking forward to it - Grant
ReplyDeleteCan't agree more. One of the BIGGEST gripes I had at business school is that a "sustainable" company was one that was defined as having a 3 year horizon for continued growth.
There is no place in the business lexicon for the little mom and pop shop that just want to put a little away on the side and do not have global domination as their driving goal.
It is a blessing from God to have what we do - by answering this blog on a laptop via a fast connection after driving to work with a full stomach - I have already defined myself as being well in the upper quartile of the global "haves" - much of it at the expense of the "have nots". The life and death question is - what am I going to do about it now?