Total Stakeholding: Leading stakeholder networks to sustainable success

Book excerpt: Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: Background of the topic an reason for its choice: Initiation for the project: To introduce this work the author refers to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011, which took place in Davos from the 26th - 30th of January 2011, its agendas and reports (The World Economic Forum, 2011). At first view this meeting looks like a get-together of several leaders from different backgrounds, meaning leaders from different industries as well as political and religious leaders. But the huge amount of attendees and their position in the world turns this get-together into a platform to discuss strategies and solutions for the world s future economy and how to overcome the latest issues regarding the financial crisis. The theme of this year s meeting was Shared norms for a new reality , indicating, that the world has reached a turning point where change is important to assure a sustainable future. Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister of Thailand, for example states Governments and businesses should start revising their social contracts with their stakeholders in the light of the new realities of the post-crisis world . Furthermore his concern is that today s leaders are mostly just focused on the short-term success, due to the high pressure from their shareholders and thus work in their own borders without caring about the common good outside the borders in order to generate sustainable success. This concern gets a higher emphasis by Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, who actually attacks today s businesspeople and want to send them back to university because they just aim for short-term profits, rather than worrying about a sustainable future. In addition it is about the future leadership role of China considering multi stakeholders to achieve win-win solutions (Victor Chu, First Eastern Investment Group), leadership for people (Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Finance) and finally an optimistic outlook for the future, especially Europe, and the request of change and more transparency by David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. At the end buzzwords like stakeholders, sustainability, partnership, social responsibility, growth, balance and responsible leadership, just to name a few, can be found throughout all statements. As a matter of course all these statements are in a broader context meaning global issues, but can easily transferred to normal businesses. Reason for this project: Sustainability has [...]