Conclusion

Abstract

This book describes a profound change in business thinking. It is about business solving problems for customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, communities, environment, and societies. It requires building strong partnerships with a variety of different organizations and individuals. It necessitates expenditures and investments in human, natural, and social as well as financial and material assets, and it involves constructing metrics of performance of different types of capital. An accounting framework is required that involves reclassifying expenditures as capital rather than current costs and making appropriate provision for maintenance of relevant capitals. The book has not only set out the principles and practice of this new management innovation but also shown how companies in different sectors, parts of the world, and stages of their development have implemented them in practice. It has therefore demonstrated the practical reality as well as the conceptual theory that underpins putting purpose into practice. The reason why this matters is that shifting from profit production to problem solving is the means by which business in the future will re-establish the credibility and trust that it should command in society.