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John Elkington, Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. Capstone, Oxford, 1997, 402 pp. ISBN 1-900961-27-X.
"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?". Elkington believes, yes. The "cannibals" referred to are the business firms in our rapidly evolving capitalist economies, where it is the natural order of things for corporations to devour their competitors. The "fork" that the cannibals can use to progress into a new stage of civilization is the concept of sustainable business, and that is what the book is all about. Everyone will profit if the cannibals will adopt the fork: business itself, its shareholders, the stakeholders, society and the environment. "Sustainable business" is the new managerial paradigm that Elkington presents for the next century. The concept is not new, but has mostly been limited to environmental sustainable. Cannibals With Forks sets out to enlarge the concept, thus presenting a broad picture of what a social responsibility agenda for business should entail. Business is sustainable when it lives up to the "triple bottom line" of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice. The three bottom lines are interrelated, interdependent, and partly in conflict. Delivering against the triple bottom line requires of business a revolution of thinking and acting in no less than seven dimensions ("thinking in 7D"): markets, values, transparency, life-cycle technology, partnerships, time-perspective and corporate governance.
The book consists of four parts. Part I reviews progress to date in the "greening" of capitalism and explores some of the implications of the triple bottom for business. A question asked in this part is whether capitalism it itself sustainable. Although "capitalism and sustainability do not make easy bedfellows", capitalism can be as much the solution to the present sustainability crisis, as it is its cause. It will have to be. Fukuyamian in his evaluation of the historic role and place of political and economic liberalism, Elkington sees no ready alternative for capitalism. A sustainability agenda for the world economy in the next century will, realistically, have to be an agenda for a free market economy. The author is not pessimistic about capitalism's potential for sustainability: "Companies able to engage their stakeholders with a clear vision of their shared future and, in the process, to outperform their competitors...