Net positive and its application to water management

Abstract

Recently, Paul Polman, who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Unilever (one of the world’s biggest multinational companies) between 2009 and 2019, and Andrew Winston, a specialist on sustainable business, wrote Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take (2021). This highly readable book provides a new and more appropriate framework for business, eschewing decades of dogma, which was aptly summed up by Milton Friedman (who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences) as ‘there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits ...’ (Friedman, 1962, p.133). For the most part, Friedman’s philosophy was accepted by businesses for some 50 years. Even now, many CEOs of large to small business companies have held this view, either explicitly or implicitly. We have known Polman for several years. He is one of the most unorthodox, charismatic and out-of-the-box thinkers we have ever encountered. Not surprisingly, The Financial Times of London has described him as a ‘standout CEO of the past decade’. He and his co-author have written not ‘a utopian fantasy’ but have cogently and persuasively argued for a new mindset from the business leaders to ensure ‘the scale of change and transformation the world so desperately needs’. This mindset will meet the twin essential objectives of making the world a better place to live in and also to produce decent returns for the shareholders of companies. The authors define a ‘net positive’ company as one that ‘improves well-being for everyone it impacts and at all scales – every product, every operation, every region and country, and for every stakeholder, including employees, suppliers and communities, customers, and even future generations and the planet itself’ (Polman & Winston, 2021, p.7). It is an ambitious goal that, to our knowledge, no company in the world has achieved completely. However, a most positive recent development has been that numerous companies all over the world have started on such journeys. The authors provide numerous examples from the performance of Unilever when it started its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) in 2010. This plan made purpose and enriching others’ lives as the core to Unilever’s business philosophy. Among its aggressive goals were doubling sales while cutting its environmental footprint in half and helping one billion people to improve their health and well-being. The authors refreshingly accept that the USLP journey has not been easy, and ‘Unilever has plenty of war wounds and mistakes to point to’. Equally, Unilever has accomplished a great deal. For example, for 11 straight years, it was ranked as the number one sustainable company in the world. In fact, during Polman’s captaincy, it was the ‘gold standard’ to which CEOs of nearly all other major companies aspired to. Interestingly, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 2022, VOL. 38, NO. 5, 737–741 https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2022.2110265