Routledge Digging Deeper: How Purpose-Driven Enterprises Create Real Value

What is the primary purpose of business? The standard answer is ‘making profits,’ but some visionary entrepreneurs and leaders fundamentally disagree. Instead of just making money, they choose instead to “dig deeper” and make a difference through creating real value – improving the lives of others even as they find deeper meaning in their own. These leaders build enterprises that provide identity and a sense of purpose, create positive relationships and a place to learn and thrive, embed sustainability in all that they do, and strive to improve the quality of life of all of their stakeholders. Although not their primary focus, they also make healthy profits, as their unique approach to value creation provides them with a sustainable competitive edge.Digging Deeper is a book full of inspiring stories that illustrate that there is an alternative to a myopic and narrow capitalism that trades in inequalities, exploitation, collective burnout and negative consequences for our shared natural environment. Remarkable examples from all over the world vividly demonstrate how enterprises can create real value through focusing on what the authors call the 6 Ls: long-term orientation, lasting relationships, local roots, limits recognition, developing a learning community and taking leadership responsibility seriously in its very best sense.Digging Deeper liberates the term “value” from the tight chains in which the global financial community has bound it and demonstrates that businesses can contribute to a better life for all ‒ if their leaders can go beyond viewing enterprises as single-purpose money-making machines and develop purpose-driven enterprises that create real value for all. Review Digging Deeper reveals the basic principles of how enterprises that create real value operate and why they are successful. It is a book that, unlike others in this sphere, unearths the roots of real value creation. The reader will recognize how six qualities, neatly arranged in an easily understandable “6L”-framework (long-term orientation, lasting relationships, local roots, limits recognition, learning community and leadership responsibility), interact and contribute to building enterprises that create both societal value and sustainable profits for their owners.In Digging Deeper, readers meet many “practical idealists” who have been guided by their ideals to create enterprises that make a positive difference in the world. Readers will be inspired by their stories to become part of the change that they would like to see in the business world. - CEEMAN News, Winter 2016, Issue 82 | | Unthinkable: How do we distinguish good businesses from evil? What makes a good business? Presumably it must survive; it must be profitable enough to pay its staff a decent wage and to honour its trade agreements. But beyond that there is very little debate, let alone consensus, on what distinguishes a commendable or worthwhile company from a bad one.Google’s corporate mission statement is “Don’t be evil”, but against what measure can we establish whether it is meeting its promise?Step forward Finbarr Bradley, a lecturer in business and management who has developed, with colleagues Dietmar Sternad and James Kennelly, a model for identifying “deep purpose enterprises”.In their book, Digging Deeper, they profile a number of businesses which create “real value” rather than pursuing short-term profit. Real value, they say, means satisfying “our deepest human needs through providing meaning and identity and a higher quality of life for owners, employees, customers, partners and the community alike while renewing the health of our planet”. - The Irish Times - Joe Humphreys About the Author DIETMAR STERNAD is Professor of International Management at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Villach, Austria. JAMES J. KENNELLY is Professor of International Business & Management, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, USA.