Huffington Magazine Issue 72 | Page 40

TOMOHIRO OHSUMI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES Voices for food, water, minerals and energy which, together with the environmental consequences of escalating global consumption, is unsustainable. In order to understand the implications of our current patterns of consumption, we need urgently to reassess the relationship between shareholder and societal value and shift the focus significantly to the long term. Dominic Barton, the managing director of McKinsey & Company, and Mark Wiseman, president and CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, have both argued that firms are under increasing pressure to be short-term at the cost of longer-term strategic decision-making. Performance metrics based on share prices are used at the expense of long-term value creation. At the same time rewards are skewed to investors who want to make a quick return )