In the globalised world we have created, the entire supply chain will have to change. Pressure from large buyers in industries will avalanche a change in suppliers who compete for these orders and this lifts the bar for everyone along the chain.
And how does all this affect profit? One of the effects of such a paradigm shift in business is the savings it brings in its wake. Minimising packaging saves material costs and transportation costs, especially when half of the packet of cereal is usually just filled with air! The quality of products improves when there is a point source supply rather than when you buy off the trade markets.
A rupee saved is effectively a rupee earned.
Yet fundamentally the notion of profit that the current business scenario is working with, takes little note of the costs to the environment. Nature has highly subsidised industry and the moment you start building these costs into the final cost of the product, ‘profits’ dissolve substantially.
Are sustainability and profitability mutually exclusive or can they coexist in a radically transparent world? Can doing good lead to doing well for a business? Goleman believes this is possible if we ‘make goodness pay’. He feels that it would create markets where ethics, innovation and initiative are rewarded by growing sales.
Such markets balance power between manufacturers and consumers, allowing the consumer to decide, based on all the information it makes available, what kind of a world she wants to create. The book builds this vision, in the faith that an individual consumer when endowed with this power, will choose for a more compassionate world.
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