J Turquey says Sam DiPiazza, PwC's CEO is taking up the chair at World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The press release says:
Mr. DiPiazza said he would bring an independent mindset and a wide international and cross-industry perspective to help the WBCSD. With increasing public concern about the environment and the growing gap between have and have-nots, business, government and civil society must address these challenges together.
Independent - now there's a big word and not one I'd expect to see applied to PwC which, along with the other members of the Big Four cartel has a lock on how issues like 'sustainability' are defined. This is a major problem. Regardless of the brand position, fact remains the Big Four spend more time acting in the interests of a sliver of all stakeholders. If you ask them, they'll likely throw their own 'stakeholder' satisfaction stats at you. These will include institutional shareholders, audit committees and government and bodies and indicate a high level of satisfaction. They won't include indirect stakeholders like the smaller shareholder, labour organizations and the like where I suspect the answer might be very different.
But then what can one expect. Despite claiming leadership, WBCSD:
...is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development.
That means their agenda will always be tainted by the things that drive their business needs. Increasingly, those seem to be more pathological than rational. JTurquey makes the point well:
Mr. DiPiazza's firm must be an example: there must be no gap between what is said or communicated and what is enforced or implemented all the more than when dysfunctions are public and/or official. The differences between PwC separate and independent legal entities in the definition of topics like CSR wants clarifying: Luxembourg, the small place where everybody knows everyone, is a telling example.
So wants clarfying the censorship on sensitive issues like economic crime where Luxembourg is as well a telling example as auditors' independance is not sought but steady growth is.
The trouble is there is a gap - a very significant gap that our professional leaders are doing precious little to close.
Technorati Tags: big four, PWC, sustainability
Sponsored By: EditGrid - collaborative online spreadsheets
Link to original post