SHE can coexist with enterprise

Unilever has successfully demonstrated how virtue can be sustained over generations in enterprise. Can the same be said about venerable Indian companies?

Virtue — sustainability, honesty, and enlightenment, or SHE — can coexist with enterprise, despite appearing as polar opposites. Virtue and enterprise can and should be reconciled. Here is an example of virtue being sustained over generations.

While Unilever has retained the basic philosophy of William Lever, albeit modified and modernised, that is not the case with other storied names that are often written about in business history. “Even when virtuous practices have been implemented, they have had relatively short half-lives in most corporations…most executives believe that their shareholders opposed such practices,” concluded James O’Toole in his book The Enlightened Capitalists,