"Organizations are open systems, which mean they both impact and are impacted by their external environment. The ecology of any organism is not its internal mechanisms, but the relationship it has with its surroundings. Recent trends in how financial markets evaluate what is a “good company” suggest more than just a healthy bottom line (profit).
Management’s quest for health and vitality is The Double Bottom Line (DBL) mandate, which is an imperative to be effective at managing the tension between one's ecology (interacting with their external environment) and the their economics (profitably mobilizing capital to provide products and services). While economic performance is impacted by the internal control of capital allocations, the ecology is uncertain and hostile.
Winning is changing behavior of individuals in society so that they become customers and consumers.
For businesses to continue to earn the right to exist, they must provide benefit(s) to society that people are willing to purchase. They must do it in a way that they create an economic benefit sufficient for the capitalists, and they must accomplish this Double Bottom Line mandate in a hostile world, where society constrains the profit motive of markets by demanding “fairness”, and competition wishes to take away the business’ customers. "
available at
winning in a hostile environment @ amazon.com
