cover image Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference

Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference

Tim Sanders, . . Doubleday, $23.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-385-52357-8

The “Responsibility Revolution” is underway, and it's challenging the importance of the bottom line, argues Sanders (Love Is the Killer App), former CSO of Yahoo. Both consumers and employers have turned away from price consciousness to demand that companies make a difference to society through their products, manufacturing methods, environmental efforts and community outreach. According to the author, casual consumers now represent the minority; mindful consumers have brought in a new value system, paying as much attention to a company's environmental and social policies as to its pricing structures. Companies that do not clean up their acts will be left in the dust, losing customers who want their money to go toward good causes and employees who place more importance on green factors and job satisfaction than pay scale. Through success stories like Horst Rechelbacher, the brains behind the ecologically sound cosmetics company Aveda, and Lee Scott's greening of Wal-Mart in 2004, Sanders makes a compelling argument for the necessity for businesses to appeal to their customers' hearts as well as their wallets. (Sept.)