Seeing babies born without genitalia in Mexico prompted Anita Roddick to show slides to representatives of US companies whose tobacco pesticides scientists found were responsible. They were among her audience at a meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce and she expected to be howled off the stage. But there was no reaction and she was chilled by the experience.
Body Shop founder Anita Roddick is no ordinary businesswoman - she has been breaking the rules throughout her extraordinarily successful career. Business As Unusual is a passionately argued case for doing business by turning convention upside down.
Roddick hates globalisation's drive to break trade barriers down in the pursuit of profit at the expense of sustainable growth. Companies must concern themselves with giving back to the community as much as trading - otherwise the planet will die. Korean electronics multinational Samsung spent $119 million (€136 million) in 1997 on "social contributions" such as environmental schemes and computer lessons and made profits of $291 million. When the Indonesian economy later imploded, loyal Samsung employees protected its refrigerator plant in Surabaya from rioters. She reminds us that Victorian philanthropists funded schools, libraries and hospitals in the belief that a healthier, better-educated workforce was good for business.
Roddick thinks "vigilante consumers" and organisations like Greenpeace have the power to force corporations to stop dealing with dictatorships, testing products on animals and using genetically-modified ingredients. Sales of Nike shoes fell because of publicity about using child labour in Thailand. The company responded by allowing monitoring of conditions in all its factories. She points out four out of 10 consumers around the world reacted against unethical practices in 1999 according to research by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, BP Amoco and Bell Canada.
Roddick rails against "the tyranny of the beauty business" and cites a survey of 10-year-old girls in the US which found that 80 per cent were on diets. But 98 per cent of those buying into the diet industry, she says, fail to meet their targets.
Anita Roddick has plenty to say - about entrepreneurship, management, restructuring and making it as a woman - and she says it well. If you don't agree with everything she argues for, you are still guaranteed to learn a lot about doing business today.
jmulqueen@irish-times.ie
