Culture and communities

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Culture and communities

1. Introduction
2. Facts and perspectives
3. Join the community and discussion using the framework for sustainability conversations (+ daily insights)—part 4/5 "Culture and communities "
4. Visual of the week
5. Nevelab Technologies Business Partner Program
6. Our world in data: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
7. Weekly resources and podcast: "Corporate leadership" with Sara Murdock

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1. Introduction

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.—Mahatma Gandhi

The global economy has been brought to its knees as a result of thoughtless, irresponsible activities. Underlying the current health and economic difficulties is a far more severe crisis: the loss of communities—a sense of belonging to and caring for something larger than themselves. Decades of short-term management have exaggerated the significance of inadequate leadership while reducing others to fungible commodities.?

Companies are commonly perceived to be thriving at the expense of their communities. Trust in business has reached unprecedented lows, prompting policymakers to enact measures that harm competitiveness and drain economic development.?

Most organizations are stuck in a vicious and limited approach to value generation. A large portion of the problem stems from their own culture. Leaders are so focused on optimizing short-term financial performance that they miss the market's greatest unmet demands as well as larger impacts on their long-term success.

• What choices should we make as a society to encourage communities?
• Why should we rebuild companies as communities?
• How do we create shared value(s)?
• Who motivates us to proceed?

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2. Facts and perspectives

2.1—Facts: communities at work to build sustainability.

"The capitalist system is under siege." wrote Mark Kramer, senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School in 2011. In recent years, the business world has been chastised for being a significant source of social, environmental, and economic issues. The recent stimulus measures taken by governments and the rescue plans of the world's largest and sickest businesses will not fix the problem on their own.

Companies must re-engage their employees, "economic growth cannot be sustained without inclusiveness": establish a sector authority and value the market. Caring for jobs, colleagues, and workspace environments, and being motivated by this caring, is what it means to be a part of a community at work.

Individualism is a wonderful concept. It gives motivation, fosters leadership, and fosters development—but not on its own. If we acknowledge capitalism's immense capacity as a generator of good social effect, the most powerful method to merge social innovation and economic value is through a company's community strategy, not individual leadership.

We are social animals who cannot operate properly without a broader social organization than ourselves. The term "community" refers to the social glue that holds us together for the greater benefit.

This sense of community is common in startups and small businesses. They are expanding, energizing, and dedicated to their employees, almost like a family. But sustaining it with the onset of maturity may be a challenge: things slow down, politics builds up, and they are no longer free to roam the earth. Community is here to maintain the social sector, such as with NGOs, not-for-profits, and cooperatives. The mission may be more engaging, and the people more interested.

It is by creating social effect through an innovative and successful community strategy reshapes the nature of competition and integrates social impact into the fabric. This necessitates going much beyond a material component checklist. Shared values provided by the community can influence strategy at three mutually reinforcing levels:

1. Creating new products that address emerging social needs or open previously unserved customer segments.
2. Increasing productivity in the value chain, whether by finding new efficiencies or increasing the productivity of employees and suppliers;
3. Investing in improving the business environment or industry cluster in the value chain.

There is convincing evidence that excellence in detecting and exploiting certain social and environmental concerns important to the business may have a significant economic impact on organizations and even whole sectors over time. Few company executives, and even fewer investors, are aware of this compelling economic-value argument.

Most business executives see sustainability as a means to improve their reputations and attract socially conscious customers, workers, and investors. This is because these criteria were assessed without taking into account the causal link between a company's social impact and its purpose.

Moreover, outside of SRI and impact investing funds, most investment analysts who examine ESG variables do so as a means of attracting socially responsible asset owners or as a tool to mitigate regulatory or reputational risks in their portfolio businesses. The influence of social innovations on competitiveness and the production of economic value is not completely understood or even taken into account. As a result, corporate leaders, analysts, and investors are all losing out on a significant value driver that is precisely supposed to structure the core of the community.

2.2—Perspectives: leaders need to slow down and reflect.

In large, hierarchical organizations, certain conditions help facilitate a transformation to communityship yet, the pressures of the workplace hardly encourage thoughtful action.?

Sustainable production chains, leading forward innovation models for more responsible urban logistics, serving a better quality of work-life is the ultimate goal of many organizations. The upcoming generation of organizations needs a whole new language, whether it is well-positioned to flourish in an increasingly climate-change-driven future or supported by investors and stakeholders concerned about sustainability and efficiency--to bridge the gap between social impact and economic performance support sustainable living.?

The responsibility is now to build a whole new approach based on sustainable communities and culture.?The issues are multiple, and it's perhaps time to rebuild organizations from the center out, rather than the top-down or even the bottom up—via groups of leaders and managers who knit together and push essential changes in their organizations.?

It is necessary that in a world of the volatile financial system, the growing cost of living, inflation, debt, lack of affordable housing, fake information, companies need to develop their forces around community values. Witch hunts, after all, have their origins in society.?

Balance is what we require. As a result, we would be wise to consider these forces as cooperating in a socially responsible manner to overcome the insularity that prevails in many companies. A good society strikes a balance between leadership, community, and citizenship and has wellbeing and healthcare resilience.

We need organizations that address significant issues as strong communities based on autonomous, self resilient and self-sufficient systems and economic models based on essential life services.?

This is what the startup Otarki proposes: a decentralized and autonomous network of communities and life services. It is only by providing open governance, life services based on the local economy, sustainable finance, creating autonomous communities driven by a wellbeing impact assessment that we will obtain a healthy society properly balanced by leadership, communityship, and citizenship. Learn more about Otarki.

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3. Join the discussion using the framework for sustainability?conversations: Culture and communities—Part 4/5

3.1—Join the discussion: Culture and communities

In a new sort of double-entry accounting system, companies must begin to report on the shared value they generate. There will be many challenges in developing shared-value accounting or impact-weighted accounts.

We've suggested a 3-part framework for sustainability conversations, and to help you practice, we've created the following threads to help you join the discussions, ask your questions, comment. Join the discussion—subscribe now—and get a 22% off summertime offer:

• Markets, policies, and governance, part 1/5
• Circular, regenerative economy, part 2/5
• Diversity, inclusion, ethics, part 3/5
• Culture and communities, part 4/5, opening today!
• Philosophy and wellbeing, part 5/5

? The Road to Sustainability Framework PDF, request your free copy now!

3.2—Conclusion

There is no such a word as "communityship." It should be—to act as a buffer between individual leadership and collective citizenship. I believe that the word "leadership" should never be used without mentioning "communityship."

Of course, leadership is required, particularly to build a community in a new organization or a corporation willing to expand. To help sustain it in an established organization. We don't need the obsession with leadership—with the one picked out from the others, as if they are the organization's end all and be all. So, here's to less leadership, or, maybe more accurately, just enough leadership rooted in communityship.

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4. Visual of the week

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5. Nevelab Technologies Partner Program

With climate change causing investment risks and opportunities through structural changes in almost every sector of the global economy, we believe that any collaboration launched during such turbulent times must benefit from the latest research on sustainability investment to make the best possible corporate strategic decisions.

These collaborations will allow us to engage closely with universities, centers of innovation, and institutions to incorporate the most current knowledge about investments and sustainability, in addition to enabling pioneering research in the sustainability and efficiency areas.

??We partner with world-class technology providers and system integrators to deliver unmatched sustainability innovation tools and value.?

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6. Our world in data:?Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG)

• The latest measurement of atmospheric CO2?(as of August 7, 2021): 414.60 ppm; July 2020: 415.00 ppm; 25 years ago: 360 ppm; 250 years ago, est: 250 ppm.
• Methane (CH4) is estimated to have a GWP of 28–36 over 100 years.?
• Nitrous Oxide (N2O) has a GWP 265–298 times CO2 for a 100-year timescale. N2O emitted today remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, on average.

? More critical resources:?Real-time temperature???Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment

? Please consider sharing these numbers with your community by forwarding this email or tweeting?this.

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7. Weekly highlights: resources and podcast

7.1—Resources and archives

??Resources: an animated presentation on YouTube to better understand sustainability?Introduction to Sustainability by The Road to Sustainability?.

??Daily sustainability insights in your inbox?(special offer).

??Please give?me feedback???Become a partner.

??Archives: the full list of The Road to Sustainability reviews?

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7.2—Podcast:?"Corporate leadership, social interactions, and the future of work" series with Dr.?Sara Murdock, Ph.D.?

“Mental health in the workplace, wellbeing and environmental stability.”

With the growing potential of global vaccinations on the horizon, companies worldwide are grappling with the effects of pandemic management and recovery on their operations—the communities and constituencies they serve and, most importantly, their employees. As businesses strive to emphasize workplace and customer health and safety alongside productivity and strategic plan success, the psychological and physical wellbeing of employees has been brought into closer emphasis this year.

For this sixth episode of The Road to Sustainability?Podcast series dedicated to corporate leadership,?Sara?and I share some tips and tricks on the feminine approach very much needed in the enterprise.

You can listen to The Road to Sustainability? Podcast on your favorite streamer?Anchor?-?Apple Podcasts?-?Breaker?-?GooglePodcasts?-?Spotify?-?YouTube?-?SoundCloud.

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At?Nevelab Technologies,?we support cutting-edge research, development, and demonstration (RD&D), which is key to achieving accelerated innovation and helping the private sector support economic growth, drive down costs for key technologies, and promote corporate leadership assessment sustainability and efficiency.

I hope this effort answers the many questions I get about helping?organizations embrace sustainability principles?and become more future-proof.?

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Information

???The IEEE Global Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS) Well-being Initiative?is an IEEE program whose purpose is to ensure every technologist is educated, trained, and empowered to prioritize ethical considerations in the design and development of autonomous and intelligent systems. The Initiative is global, open, and inclusive, welcoming all individuals or representatives of organizations dedicated to advancing technology for humanity. Please reach out to me directly to learn how to join the Global Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS) Well-being Initiative team.

???The Road to Sustainability?is a global network to build a more efficient, safe, and inclusive world. Sustainability is a fundamental part of every organization's culture, investment goals, and actions as a responsible business undergoing changes and being transferred between paradigm shifts.

???Nevelab Technologies?is a purpose-driven platform that leverages artificial intelligence to provide organizations with the tools to integrate sustainable imperatives while generating actionable insights.

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Disclaimer

The Road to Sustainability? is an initiative by?Nevelab Technologies?and is circulated for informational and educational purposes only.

Nevelab Technologies Research utilizes data and information from the public, private and internal sources, including data from actual Nevelab open data access. While we consider information from external sources reliable, we do not assume responsibility for its accuracy.

The views expressed herein are solely those of Nevelab Technologies as of this report's date and are subject to change without notice. Nevelab Technologies may have a significant financial interest in one or more of the positions and securities or derivatives discussed. Those responsible for preparing this report receive compensation based upon various factors, including, among other things, the quality of their work and firm revenues.