Dynamic decision-making is one way that companies can balance their financial and social impact goals, according to a recent Harvard Business Review posting.
What this amounts to is quick thinking about when to move resources in a different direction, the Jan. 4, 2019 piece by professors from Cornell University, the University of Delaware and Harvard Business School asserts.
“The best leaders in dual-purpose organizations consider their high-level principals sacrosanct but their ground-level decisions provisional,” the posting explains. “This is especially important in organizations with social-vs-financial tradeoffs to make.”
One example the piece cites is yoga apparel maker Lululemon, which started with a decentralized, employee-centric culture. A new CEO tried to boost growth and take the company public, but the team he brought in to enable this diminished the employee-centric qualities at the company. Another dramatic shift, over time, focused on growing less and supporting employees more like the company’s original mission, and the firm eventually balanced the two needs, according to the article.
The article recommends two other ways to balance social impact and financial goals. To read the full piece, click here.