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| Redefining Competitiveness: The New ‘Responsibility’ Paradigm |
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All of us recognize instinctively how fast the world is changing. |
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Experts now calculate that the rate of technological change doubles every decade. If they are right, in the next twenty-five years we will likely experience 100 calendar years of change. We have moved from coping with a perpetual state of change - as we assimilated the Internet and the altering of our daily lives - to managing an accelerating pace of dramatic change. We are now in a prolonged migration of testing, learning, and adapting that is faster than the ability people have to assimilate it. |
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Less obvious is a plate shift taking place underneath the surface level buzz of everyday life. It is here where many instruments of our government, culture, economic, and political system have been experiencing a fundamental realignment in character and purpose, authority, impact, and connectivity. There is a birthing of new consciousness taking shape; the result of collective yet seemingly unrelated phenomena unintentionally conspiring to produce fallout in the form of a steady succession of transformational occurrences. |
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We can see this shift in the reciprocal transfer of social, cultural, and philosophical ideas between Western nations and the developing world. There is an unprecedented resettlement of people, resources, and technology. This escalation in globalization has converged markets and commerce, governing institutions, and national cultures as well as beliefs and behavioral norms. It has also prompted its own instinctive reciprocity which creates interdependency among economies. |
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Running parallel to all of these shifts is a transition from the era of technological seduction and dazzling gadgetry to a new age of equilibrium between invention and experience. Innovation is moving us on to greater meaning and human connectedness. The challenge for business will be to harness the right proportion of technology as a tool to deliver for stakeholders the essential meaning they now seek. |
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The perfect storm for transformation
Various scandals, market failure, and the general upheaval that has been triggered from incompetency or bad behavior has melded with tragedies in human suffering and the destruction from disasters and conflict to brew the perfect storm. As a result, a renewed emphasis on competence, authenticity, and responsibility is taking hold that is requiring organizations of all stripes to reshape their business models and practices. Organizations must align with changed expectations for leadership and behavior aligned with public interest values. The emergence of a “conscientious consumer” is illustrative of how customers now make purchases with an expectation of reciprocity from the brand company: Any purchase is a contribution to the wealth of a brand, and that requires a return on investment in the form of a contribution to the customer’s world, or what’s important to them.
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Going forward, achieving sustainable competitiveness will require organizations to configure and execute around a triple-bottom line (people, planet, profit) reference point. That means, essentially, that an organization will need to build specific values or beliefs into their mission that are executable via deliberate strategic acts or behaviors (including that of partners, suppliers, etc.). Such behaviors will then need to be benchmarked against performance criteria and metrics for their impact upon the enterprise. For most, this journey is just beginning. |
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All of these factors constitute an evolution in collective consciousness. It is a new paradigm: the pursuit, on a continuum, of a consensus for - and expectation of - notions of responsibility. |
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While each organization must redefine competitiveness for its own context, responsibility requires a focus on a universal set of impacts: |
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Sustainability: the viability, continuity, and longevity of the enterprise |
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Innovation: perpetual product and service improvement in fulfillment of customer aspirations |
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Brand integrity: equity enhancement premised on closing the walk-talk gap |
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Stakeholder wellbeing: the social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions of values consciousness |
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Governance: ethics, accountability, transparency, competence |
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Human capital development: training and education, just labor practices, diversity |
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Environmental stewardship: resource conservation, utilization of clean tech and renewables |
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Corporate citizenship: societal empowerment and resourceful self-governance via community/emerging market investments |
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Welcome to competitiveness redefined for a 21st century marketplace. |
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