The raison d'etre of business is its economic contract with society – to create wealth through the production of goods and services which are consumed by the people. Conventionally, the success of business has been viewed in terms of profits it generates i.e. a purely financial, single bottomline measure. This has, however, changed over the years to view the success of business from several other measures besides profit. Profits are necessary and inevitable for the success of business but the way the profits are generated is equally important. The social, environmental, ethical, informational means and methods employed to generate profits have a bearing on the responsible and accountable behaviour of business. Thus, a concept of multiple bottomlines has evolved from these concerns to measure the success of business as multipurpose organisations set to achieve multiple objectives.

The Stakeholders Focus

Accompanying this change is the shift from viewing business as shareholder focused organisations to stakeholder focused organisations. The various stakeholders that a business is held accountable to include owners, customers, employees, environment, regulatory authorities, community, and society, at large. Business has to maintain a careful 30 Empowering Society balance between the demands and pressures of these various stakeholders, which can sometimes be conflicting in nature.

Peter Pruzan (2001) succintly identifies the distinctive features of these two views of organisation which he calls ‘shareholder value perspective’ and ‘stakeholder value perspective’: