By Luke Gillott
OVER THE PAST five decades, organisations have been operating with the sole focus to maximise profits and shareholder value, regardless of social and/or environmental externalities. In other words, instead of creating value, many have been extracting value. This has resulted in a global economy that is currently failing to address today’s key challenges such as global warming, inequality, natural resource degradation and other market failures.
For these very reasons, it should come as no surprise that today’s consumers and investors are becoming more demanding and discerning. A recent study by Nielson found that 66% of millennials are willing to pay a premium for products or services from companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact.104 Similarly, a US Trust survey found that millennials want to express their social, political and environmental values through their investments.105
This has given rise to noble organisations such as the Benefit Corporation (B Corp) in the US and Società Benefit in Italy, whose objective is to certify companies and corporations that purposefully redefine business through their social, environmental, accountability and transparency standards. In order to be certified, companies must undergo a rigorous evaluation that holistically assesses the company’s operations across the focal areas of worker engagement, community involvement, environmental footprint and governance structure. B Corp-certified companies shift the emphasis away from short-termism and the sole maximisation of shareholder profits toward a new focus, or set of expectations, that uses the power of business to create shared value and long-term prosperity for all stakeholders.
Very importantly, certified B Corp companies are required to satisfy rigorous independent standards of performance across the above-mentioned focal areas that allow for transparent and easily comprehensible impact reporting, with the B Corp association offering assistance to improve upon certain impact areas.
The B Corp certification is gaining popularity, evidenced by the recent acquisition of WhiteWave by the French multinational food company, Danone Dairy, whose ambitions are to maintain the health-focused image by becoming the largest public benefit corporation, with the objective to “treat people, purpose and profit as coexisting priorities.”106 Other well-known B Corps include Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s and Etsy.
Organisations, both small and large, are slowly becoming aware of the long-term risks of failing to adapt their business models to entail the conscious, multiple value creating practices demanded by today’s differing stakeholder groups, who wish only to collaborate with companies that share similar or aligned values.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a high-level, holistic overview of the internal and external practices of conscious, multiple value creating companies that purposefully broaden their operating purpose and focus beyond mere profit maximisation. These kinds of companies deeply embed the creation of value for all stakeholders into their purpose, in order for the entire ecosystem of businesses, society and the environment to thrive.
At the very core of conscious business practices is a purpose, and the manner in which that purpose integrates stakeholders. Our exploratory journey will begin with organisational purpose, before we explore the different stakeholders and other critical conscious practices and concepts that enable companies to create long-term multiple value.
Purpose
Every company should have an identified and clearly articulated purpose, answering questions such as why they exist, what they strive to achieve, what they stand for and, most importantly, which stakeholders they wish to create value for.
A 2015 Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey found that 89% of executives believed that employee satisfaction is driven by a strong sense of collective purpose, 84% believed it can affect an organisation’s ability to transform and 80% believed it can increase customer satisfaction. Yet, alarmingly only 46% of the surveyed executives stated that their company has a strong sense of purpose and 44% said they are trying to develop one.107
In their extensive research project on the effects of organisational culture on long-term economic performance, Harvard Business School professors and thought leaders John Kotter and James Heskett concluded that organisations with purpose-driven and empowering cultures significantly outperformed their peers in employment, net income and stock price growth.108
Conscious companies accept that their purpose is to provide a solution to a problem, while simultaneously creating value for all of its stakeholders. Such companies understand the impact and value that a strong sense of purpose adds to an organisation’s value proposition. Purpose serves as the bedrock of enterprise strategy; it is what attracts, inspires and retains the right stakeholders, while simultaneously pointing and driving them in a specific direction. It is a mindset of managing for, as opposed to with, stakeholders. And finally, purpose allows for more efficient and effective management and leadership teams, through quicker and more purpose-informed decisions that create value for all.
Stakeholder integration
Stakeholders, whether customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, competitors or the community and environment, are an integral component in the success of any business. The importance (and benefits) of stakeholder integration, along with the development of a collaborative ecosystem, were highlighted in key research contributions by Jed Emerson in 2003 and Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in 2011.
Jed Emerson’s Blended Value Map provided insight into the opportunities and benefits for companies in pursuit of similar objectives to collaborate in order to overcome common challenges,109 whereas Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s article Creating Shared Value highlighted the opportunities and competitive advantages to be gained from innovative practices within value chains as well as from the development of ecosystems.110
Ed Freeman, an American philosopher and professor of business administration widely renowned for his work on stakeholder theory, suggests companies select and integrate stakeholders that they wish to embed into their enterprise strategy. Freeman suggests three major stakeholder strategies that an organisation can pursue. The first of these is Employee-Shareholder-Customer Strategy, where organisations look after the best interests of their employees who will in turn provide high-quality customer service, ultimately creating value for shareholders. His second stakeholder strategy is the Big Five Strategy, whereby companies harmonise the interests of customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders and the community and the environment, and lastly his third strategy is the Noble Cause Strategy, which are strategies pursued by companies that want to make a positive difference in the world.111
A great example of a company pursuing the Noble Cause Strategy is Whole Foods Market, where John Mackey, founder and co-CEO, both practices and actively advocates (in his book Conscious Capitalism) a holistic and conscious approach to running businesses. Mackey’s approach to creating positive change in the world is through the integration of, and value creation for, all stakeholders including customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers and the community and environment.112
Integrating stakeholders into a company’s enterprise strategy is a major aspect of conscious companies. Regardless of size, industry or sector, conscious companies search beyond their immediate area of expertise with the intent to develop harmonious and mutually beneficial business ecosystems that create true multiple value.
Let us now explore the most important stakeholders of conscious companies, which are namely customers, employees, value chain stakeholders and ecosystems as well as the community and environment.
Trusting customers
For a company to thrive, it needs to identify and thoroughly understand its customers. The ultimate goal for a company should be to maximise customer value and benefit. This requires rigorous market analysis along with the practice of segmentation, targeting and positioning, alternatively known as STP.
Without going into too much detail, segmentation considers the various ways in which to segment a market, in other words grouping prospective customers and developing customer profiles in order to identify the optimal customer segment(s). This creates long-term customer value through better product customisation, a personalised experience and increased customer satisfaction.
To determine which customer segment(s) to target, further analysis is conducted on the differing customer segment(s), the company’s respective market competition as well as whether the customer segment(s) ‘fit’ with the company.113
Segmentation and targeting enable effective positioning, whereby the company positions its offering in the minds of customers in such a way that it is both meaningfully different and better than that of competitor offerings.
Conscious companies develop trust by serving their customers’ best interests and ensuring that customers truly benefit from the consumption of their products and/or services. Their extensive knowledge and understanding of their customer(s) is the competitive advantage that enables them to deliver greater value than their competitors, allowing for greater success in attracting, retaining, and growing a trusting customer base.
Motivated and participative employees
People desire purpose and meaning in their work as well as a workplace environment that encourages and fosters creativity and innovation. To perform at their best, people require an organisation that has an aligned or shared value system to that of their own.
I believe shared purpose and value systems are fundamental to attracting, developing and retaining loyal, brilliant and dedicated employees. It is important to provide insight into the initial hiring processes within conscious companies before moving on to employee motivation and intelligent team building.
Conscious companies deeply embed organisational fit into their hiring processes and practices. They understand the value and importance of organisational fit to both the company and employee, and place particular emphasis on ensuring the alignment of purpose, value systems and culture. The result: loyal, passionate, engaged and highly productive employees, which in turn results in lower levels of employee turnover and greater savings on new employee hiring and training.
Such hiring practices are positively correlated to employee motivation, as conscious companies understand that employees are not only motivated by extrinsic rewards, such as financial remuneration and other benefits, but also intrinsic rewards such as achievement and recognition. These companies provide purposeful and meaningful work, along with an environment that encourages autonomy, creativity and innovation. They also encourage open and transparent communication and collaboration as well as promote health and wellness with the objective to bolster employee vitality, happiness and productivity.
Employee empowerment is another crucial aspect, particularly where employees participate in decisions that directly affect them. A great example of employee empowerment is the Holacracy system, where the traditional management hierarchy is replaced with a peer-to-peer workplace structure that distributes authority and increases transparency, accountability and organisational agility.114 This allows for self-organising, self-motivating and self-managing organisations.
Additionally, conscious companies incorporate fair remuneration practices, with either extrinsic or intrinsic rewards linked to performance. Merely understanding how to incentivise employees can result in outstanding performance – whether it be a decent coffee machine or a trip to an international conference. Conscious companies also encourage and support further education and/or training programmes, especially programmes and/or coaching that focus on self-awareness.
Self-awareness training and/or coaching is another vital aspect of developing a thriving organisation, as it allows for the creation of strong, diverse and highly effective teams. This can only be achieved when employees and their managers are aware of their own working styles, strengths, weaknesses and ideal team role.115 When understood on a team and company level, embedding such qualities into a company’s hiring practices and processes enables an organisation to hire according to its required/desired working styles, strengths and team roles.
Running team bonding events is another important, yet sometimes overlooked, means to developing motivated, participative and highly efficient and effective teams, as it strengthens the bond within a team beyond mere qualifications and individual characteristics. It is a truism that a team will attain greater team member satisfaction and achieve enhanced performance when all members get along well.
Value chains, ecosystems and the circular economy
Many negative societal and environmental externalities can be generated from a company’s value chain, whether it be poor health and safety, inequitable treatment or bad working conditions, natural resource degradation or excessive water usage, merely to name a few.
The beauty of stakeholder integration and collaboration is that it can create positive externalities and additional value everywhere, whether it be upstream and/or downstream in the value chain or through the creation of diverse business ecosystems, while simultaneously maximising customer value and increasing profitability.
Companies can be innovative in their approach to working with stakeholders within their value chain. One example is reducing emissions and energy usage through the identification and development of less complex procurement and distribution systems with closer locations, which reduces travel distances and costs.
Another example of creating multiple value is to either educate, finance or share technologies with suppliers to improve input quality and supplier productivity, enhancing the end product and creating additional value for the customer and company.
The adoption of innovative technologies and cost effective practices is yet another example that enables efficient utilisation of water, raw materials as well as smart, recyclable packaging that reduces paper and plastic usage. These are merely a few examples of conscious practices within the value chain, however the scope for creativity is endless.
The beauty is that it does not end there. The development of ecosystems is where companies can truly be most creative and innovative in creating multiple value. Here companies can collaborate with related or non-related businesses, academic, public and non-profit organisations as well as the broader community in order to achieve common objectives or overcome common challenges.
The benefits of such ecosystems is that they catapult innovation, productivity and competition, ultimately creating open and transparent markets that address existing market gaps or failures such as negative externalities, inequality, information asymmetry and unstable or failing markets.
A great example of an ecosystem is the Net-Works program created through the collaboration between carpet tile manufacturer Interface, Aquafin and the Zoological Society of London. The formation of the ecosystem was initiated when Interface challenged its suppliers to explore different means of sourcing yarn, a large and essential input in the carpet manufacturing process. Aquafin delivered on this challenge by creating a regenerative system that sourced recycled yarn from commercial fishing nets. This fresh innovative thinking and approach not only had a major positive impact on marine conservation, but also resulted in the channelling of additional income to impoverished fishing communities through the collection and recycling of old fishing nets. With locations in the Philippines and Cameroon, thus far 142 metric tons of waste fishing nets have been collected, 1,500 families have access to financing and 62,000 people enjoy a healthier environment.116
The concept of ‘co-opetition’, which was expanded upon by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff, professors at Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management, involves companies simultaneously collaborating and competing with one another, allowing for the identification of new market opportunities and business strategies that maximise value creation; a complete mindset shift from ‘zero-sum’ thinking to more mutually beneficial alliances and partnerships that increase value for all.117
One of my favourite concepts of industrial innovation and multiple value creation is the circular economy, which is a regenerative system-thinking approach that moves beyond the linear ‘take, make, dispose’ production and life cycle model, where products and material waste eventually end up in landfills, to a circular ‘make, use, re-use’ model.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation eloquently describe the circular economy as “a continuous positive development cycle that preserves and enhances natural capital, optimises resource yields, and minimises system risks by managing finite stocks and renewable flows.”118
By drawing from different schools of thought including cradle-to-cradle design, biomimicry, industrial symbiosis, performance economy and sharing economy, the circular economy enables innovative business models to thrive, while simultaneously creating a regenerative and restorative global economy.
There is no better way to explain the circular economy than through an illustration of the continuous cycle of biological and technical materials in the diagram opposite.119
The circular economy also spans beyond the production and consumption of products and services. It encompasses the shift from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy sources as well as adding to the wider, and important, debate on the role of money and finance. The circular economy advocates a revamp of economic performance measurement tools to include utilisation metrics of key infrastructure and products as well as metrics that measure the success in meeting public expectation and preserving natural resource and ecosystem value,120 discussed further under the next section.
It is evident that the success of most companies is dependent on the success of its peers, along with society and the environment. For this very reason, conscious companies adopt an ‘outside the box’ approach to business practices and development, by building and leveraging off long-term mutually beneficial relationships that enable the creation, and capture, of multiple value.
Community and the environment
Studies by the United Nations report that over 700 million people live in extreme poverty, with an overwhelming majority living on less than $1.90 a day.121 Eight-hundred million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, with growth of an additional two billion anticipated by 2050.122 Statistics on access to education are staggering, with inequalities still proving a grave threat to long-term social and economic development.
Research by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership shows that the demand that humanity is placing on the Earth’s natural systems far exceeds that of the Earth’s ability to regenerate its biocapacity. In other words, humanity is “living off the planet’s capital rather than its interest, a state known as ecological deficit.”123
Today’s consumption and production patterns are causing irreversible damage to the environment – almost one third of all food produced ends up wasted in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiled due to poor transportation and harvesting practices. Water scarcity currently affects more than 40% of the global population and is anticipated to increase.124
Climate change is a serious and very real threat, evident by severe weather and rising sea levels. Life on land and below water is also at threat, due to land degradation and deforestation as well as marine debris and overfishing.
Conscious companies are aware of their social and environmental materiality as well as that of their immediate stakeholders. This awareness enables companies to proactively transform negative externalities into positive externalities through direct investment into innovative education, agriculture, food, energy and transportation systems, or the development of corporate social responsibility programmes that tackle local societal and environmental challenges. Collaboration with public sector and expert non-profit organisations is another effective means for companies to make a positive societal and environmental impact.
Conscious companies also understand the materiality, or social and environmental impact of their suppliers with whom they collaborate, providing them with the power to select and indirectly influence their business practices for the better, wherever necessary.
There are many resources available for one to gain further insight into various stakeholder integration practices and the real beauty of stakeholder integration is that it allows for the most creative forms of mutually beneficial collaboration, enabling every participative party to either create multiple value or overcome any challenge or hurdle.
Although only the tip of the iceberg, I trust this section provided a solid overview of insights into the integration of major company stakeholders along with a few collaborative practices and concepts, that inspires you to explore the consciousness and materiality of your organisation and that of its immediate stakeholders.
We now move on to exploring the practices and concepts of conscious management as well as that of empowering organisational structures.
Management and leadership
As mentioned previously, conscious companies are largely self-organising, self-motivating and self-managing organisations. However, such structures entail careful orchestration by a strong and highly conscious management and leadership team.
One could write a book on the conscious practices of managers and leaders, but for the purpose of this chapter, a brief overview of a few key management practices is provided in this subsection.
Conscious management starts with a heightened sense of self-awareness. When managers have a thorough understanding of their own personality traits, purpose, work style, strengths and weaknesses, as well as situational behaviours, they are able to practice effective management and self-regulation. This heightened self-awareness results in a better understanding of the requirements and behaviours of team members, allowing for the motivation, development and effective utilisation of each member in their team.
Heightened self-awareness also enables managers to ensure the alignment of their own purpose with that of the organisation’s, enabling them to authentically pursue the organisation’s purpose and lead in such a manner that is conducive to the long-term success of the organisation and its stakeholders. Conscious companies understand that such individuals are worth more than their weight in gold, and thus take the necessary measures to ensure that they develop and grow with the firm over the long term.
The governance and operational processes within Holacratic structures enable conscious managers to capture the benefits from an optimally decentralised structure that empowers employees as well as encourages, fosters and supports creativity and innovation. This enables management to tap into the organisation’s collective intelligence through a top-down-bottom-up coordination approach, where management’s task is merely to provide a clear strategic direction from the top, while the creative ideas originate from the bottom.
Key to innovation is collaboration and the holistic mindset of conscious managers enables them to identify and foster opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration. By stimulating greater communication and collaboration within an organisation, as well as amongst all stakeholders within its ecosystem, allows for the creation and transfer of innovative ideas that result in greater competitive advantages and sustainable organisational growth.
Corporate governance
Good corporate governance ensures the alignment of all stakeholders and is essential for the creation of long-term value.
In order to ensure perfect alignment, Peter Thiel distinguishes between three concepts: ownership with those who legally own the company’s equity, possession with those who run the company on a day-to-day basis and control with those who formally govern the company’s affairs.125
Ensuring that investors are financially rewarded, management and employees are sufficiently empowered and motivated as well as ensuring board members have adequate oversight of the big picture – sounds great and should work, in theory. However, distributing such roles can result in misalignment, such as the widely debated agency dilemma, where executives act in their best interests and not in the best interests of their shareholders, society and the environment.
A perfect example of this dilemma is executive compensation, particularly in the form of equity remuneration, which not only drives executive compensation to figures exceeding 340 times average worker pay,126 but also instils a short-term mindset, driving executives to implement severe cost-cutting exercises in order to dramatically increase their company’s share price over the short term (arguably for personal enrichment).
Whole Foods Market, a highly conscious company, caps their executive compensation at 19 times average employee pay, which over the past 25 years has proven adequate in attracting and retaining talented senior executives, particularly those more aligned with Whole Foods’ purpose.
Another important aspect of corporate governance is the gender diversity of senior management teams and boards. A diverse gender split not only encourages better leadership and governance, but also further contributes to better all-round management and board performance, and ultimately creates greater shared value and long-term prosperity for all stakeholders.
Culture
Organisational culture is a system of values, meaning and purpose that are shared throughout an organisation. It is what provides stability to a company as well as what distinguishes it from other companies and to emphasize its importance, I echo Peter Drucker’s infamous quote that “organizational culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”127
Stephen Robbins and Timothy Judge, authors of Essentials of Organizational Behaviour, break down organisational culture into the seven primary characteristics that collectively capture the essence of a company’s culture. These characteristics include innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness and stability,128 with the combination of which being highly dependent on the organisation type.
These characteristics alone give one a feel for the complexity and diversity of organisational culture, and many of the integration and management practices previously mentioned play an integral role in the formation of a positive and healthy organisational culture. However, the major role players in the creation and sustainability of organisational culture are the founders and/or top management of an organisation, as their communication and behaviours establish beliefs, values and assumptions that filter through the entire organisation.
The founders and top management teams of conscious companies beautifully orchestrate the above-mentioned primary organisational culture characteristics, resulting in a heightened set of secondary characteristics or qualities. These interdependent qualities include high levels of internal and external trust and integrity, high levels of empowerment and accountability that ensure employees hold themselves and each other accountable for their performance and deliverables. Additionally, high levels of communication and transparency allow for healthier relationships, greater employee alignment and stronger employee engagement and finally, high levels of loyalty and respect to all stakeholders, including the organisation.
One of the biggest challenges a company can face is changing an organisation’s culture and it is for this very reason that conscious companies ensure that many of the above-mentioned characteristics are deeply embedded into the practices and qualities of their management teams as well as their recruitment and selection processes, resulting in trustworthy, aligned and loyal team members.
Social environmental standards and reporting
Conscious companies aspire to create multiple values of financial, social and environmental performance within and across their ecosystem of stakeholders. In order to achieve positive social and environmental performance, conscious companies advocate reforms within their industry. This can be done in many different ways, from the creation of working groups providing peer education, to the creation, adoption or promotion of voluntary social and environmental standards.
The development and reporting of such social and environmental performance not only ensures conscious companies are aware of their own, and their industry’s, materiality, but it assists them to uncover any social and environmental risks, inefficiencies and opportunities that could otherwise have been overlooked. Such reporting also enables conscious companies to set quantifiable targets with consistent variables of measurement, allowing management to compare performance across reporting periods or industry peers. As the old adage goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it!
With measurement comes sufficient reporting, which not only provides senior management with an overview of their exposure to market failure and materiality risks and opportunities, but it also plays a major role in attracting long-term investors looking for sustainable and multiple value generating investments.
Currently there is a large push toward the adoption of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) analysis and reporting in the public investment arena, however I believe this practice needs to shift beyond merely reporting on policies and processes toward the reporting of actual impact outcomes.
Although this chapter merely skims the surface of the different conscious business concepts and practices, its aim is to get readers to think about where such concepts and practices already exist within their organisation(s) or where they may be required. The ultimate aim is for readers to further research the benefits of such concepts and practices and for them to adopt a conscious mindset, which they then actively champion to their peers.
It is my belief that in order for today’s businesses to sustain their success over the long term, they require managers and leaders with a heightened consciousness of their organisation, its internal and external stakeholders, including the broader community and environment, as well as a thorough understanding of the interdependencies across these different elements.
The common theme in this chapter was the practice of stakeholder integration and collaboration, which if implemented and/or executed effectively, allows for vast innovative and mutually beneficial opportunities. Identifying synergies with others allows organisations to leverage their capabilities, which not only benefits society and the environment, but also results in improved customer service, the establishment of competitive advantages, market leadership and ultimately sustained multiple value creation.
About Luke Gillott
Co-founder of Chi Impact Capital, Luke is a firm believer that conscious and holistic business practices offer a sound bedrock from which to achieve sustained economic, social and environmental prosperity. He channels his passion for business and investing into tackling the world’s most pressing issues through impact investing.
He has extensive experience in the global capital markets and investment management industry as well as management consulting.
Luke holds an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School (Thesis: ‘A Practical Framework for Heightened Organisational Consciousness’), postgraduate and graduate degrees in financial analysis and portfolio management from both the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University and is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) charter holder.
104 Nielsen, ‘The Sustainability Imperative’, www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/the-sustainability-imperative.html (2015).
105 US Trust, ‘2014 U.S. Trust Insights On Wealth And Worth Survey’, www.ustrust.com (June 2015).
106 D. Price, ‘Danone to create a public benefit corporation to hold WhiteWave’, www.impactalpha.com (2017).
107 ‘The Business Case For Purpose’, Harvard Business Review (2015).
108 J. Kotter, ‘Does corporate culture drive financial performance?’, www.forbes.com (February 10, 2011).
109 J. Emerson, ‘The Blended Value Map’, www.blendedvalue.org (2003).
110 M. E. Porter and M. R. Kramer, ‘Creating Shared Value’, Harvard Business Review (January 2011).
111 R. E. Freeman, et al., Stakeholder Theory: The State of Art (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
112 J. Mackey and R. Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).
113 P. Kotler and K. Keller, A Framework For Marketing Management (Pearson Education Limited, 6th edn., 2016).
114 www.holacracy.org/how-it-works.
115 www.belbin.com.
116 www.net-works.com.
117 A. Brandenburger and B. Nalebuff, Co-Opetition (HarperCollinsBusiness, 1997).
118 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The Circular Economy Concept – Regenerative Economy, www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/overview/concept.
119 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org.
120 G. Munholland, ‘Is the Circular Economy a Myth?’, www.2waysupplychain.com (December 25, 2015).
121 www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty.
122 www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger.
123 J. Reynolds, et al., ‘In search of impact: Measuring the full value of capital’, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, www.cisl.cam.ac.uk (May 2016).
124 United Nations, ‘Sustainable development goals’, www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals (2015).
125 P. Thiel and B. Masters, Zero to One (Virgin Books, 2015).
126 J. Kasperkevic, ‘America’s top CEOs pocket 340 times more than average workers’, www.theguardian.com (May 17, 2016).
127 K. Favaro, ‘Strategy or Culture: Which Is More Important?’, www.strategy-business.com (May 22, 2014).
128 S. P. Robbins and T. A. Judge, Essentials of Organizational Behavior (Pearson Education, 13th edn., 2016).