Building Competitiveness and Communities: How world-class companies are creating shareholder value and societal value, by Jane Nelson.
The Partners in Development programme aims to promote good practice by business and is an initiative between The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, The World Bank Group and the United Nations Development Programme. Jane Nelson's new publication - which consists of a report and a series of over 20 individual company profiles - is part of learning and networking process.

She argues that the leadership companies of the 21st century will be "those that base their missions and their corporate strategies around creating, measuring and managing value. Running their businesses with a clear and strong commitment to building shareholder added-value, but recognising the potential for building societal added-value as an integral part of the same process." Jane calls this SVA2.

The report looks at nine "new leadership realities" - the major challenges now facing business leaders. These include "global competitiveness" (global strategies but with local delivery and accountability); and investing in co-operation with non-traditional partners from different sectors.

The bulk of the 100+ page report, however, is devoted to building the SVA2 mindset both through core business activities (maximising profitable performance consistent with energising future business development and optimising business multipliers; maximising positive economic, social and environmental impacts and minimising negative ones) and by professionalising social investment and translating business experience into public policy ideas ("legitimising the policy dialogue").

There is then an examination of how leading companies are already mainstreaming SVA2, developing approaches to measuring their performance and for reporting on the results.

In total, it is a masterly distillation of the latest thinking from management gurus, management consultancies, international development organisations and corporate citizenship experts.

It is peppered with useful quotes, telling statistics and mind-clearing charts. There is also an excellent bibliography of a hundred articles, reports and books in this field, which have appeared since Jane's 1996 POWBLF Report: "Business as Partners in Development."

Having watched Jane in action this summer at the POWBLF-hosted meeting for business coalitions from around the world such as Business in the Community (when she took an unscripted and highly participatory opening discussion, and converted this into a series of summary flipcharts - as we spoke - which gave far more coherence and rigour than the original inputs), Jane's various charts and summary tables in this book come as no surprise. I did, however, particularly like her summary of the social issues confronting particular business sectors; just some of the examples: retailers - sourcing and packaging; oil and gas, mining - climate change; financial services - access by the poor.

Cleverly, the report is based on 50 transnational companies which have featured in one or more of the 'most admired' companies lists from Fortune, FT etc. It makes good use of quick, boxed examples. It also has the advantage of pro-bono work for POWBLF by their various management consultancy members. Overall, an excellent resource and reference book.

Published by the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum (0171 467 3600) 108 pp, £30.00, ISBN 1 899 15979 7