Twenty two years ago, Seventh Generation was born into a world much different than today’s. There were no websites and no e-mail. No cell phones and PDAs driving a 24/7 global economy. And no way anyone thought a company selling bathroom tissue made from recycled paper and $25 compact fluorescent light bulbs was ever going to make a dime, especially when it insisted on placing social and environmental ideals on an equal footing with traditional measures of success.

Flash forward two decades, and no one’s laughing anymore. Environmental products are a major growth industry, and corporate responsibility is a buzzword on everyone’s lips. There’s just one small problem: most of what currently passes for corporate responsibility really isn’t very responsible at all.

That’s the conclusion of The Responsibility Revolution, the new book co-author Bill Breen and I have spent the last two years researching and writing. What we found was a corporate responsibility (CR) movement that’s a case study in too little, too late. There’s been too much incremental change and not enough real revolution, and too many companies have declared themselves responsible while doing little that actually is. As a result, CR has frequently devolved into just another form of “greenwashing” companies use to distract us from their uglier operational truths. Even in its best moments, it’s been more about simply being less bad than doing meaningful good.

Corporate responsibility, in a word, is dead.

Most companies, however, have yet to get the memo. They like what CR does for their public relations but continue to see little reason to adopt the real behind-the-scenes transformations it was conceived to create. In this, they remain much like the many traditional businesses that have not engaged in any form of CR at all. For both, the status quo is just fine.

What these companies have failed to appreciate that a new normal is rapidly emerging, and whether today’s businesses like it or not that, the big shifts it’s bringing will soon force a change to a far purer model of ethical and sustainable corporate behavior that I call Corporate Responsibility 2.0.

The signs of the approaching corporate storm are all around us. Fueled by the digital revolution and fed by the extraordinary new access to information technology now provides, consumers and others are becoming far more informed than ever before. From NGOS to shareholder groups, people are increasingly able to monitor every company’s every move, and they’re taking ever fuller advantage of this sudden power.

At the same time, environmental and resource crises continue unabated. Global climate change is here. Peak oil is hot on its heels, and everywhere we turn we’re greeted by clear evidence that the world’s diminishing amounts of finite natural resources are combining with overwhelming human pressures to write a new set of rules we’ll have no choice but to follow. In response to a decade’s worth of corporate debacles and public outrage, laws are also coming from governments, and retailers are setting their own standards as well.

In the wake of these developments, companies are working overtime to protect their reputations and continue to grow. Global brands battling to crack markets all over the world are finding they are now expected to perform a social role, and a body politic seared by various meltdowns is punishing ‘‘bad companies’’ and demanding that all companies “do good.’’ Employees also now expect firms to adopt a purpose that’s bigger than profit, and stakeholders are increasingly pressuring institutional investors to pursue stronger principles of governance and a responsible investing strategy.

In short, it’s an exceptionally trying time to run a company, and it’s only going to get worse for the traditional business world. The good news is that Corporate Responsibility 2.0 offers a solution that’s good for business and the world we live in. As companies are discovering, this better brand of true CR is the best and often only way to raise capital, lower expenses, generate higher returns, avoid regulatory entanglements, attract top talent, and realize lasting success in the new normal. In fact, the business case for CR 2.0 (see http://www.institutesustainability.com/resource-center/sustainability-white-papers/ ) is now so overwhelming that the fact that it’s also the right thing to do almost doesn’t matter. That’s why it, too, is going to become the norm. In the future, companies will have little choice but to make it their own.

The only questions left are the very same that Seventh Generation has been asking for the last several years: What should Corporate Responsibility 2.0 look like, and which of its elements best address the emergent challenges that the business community now faces? The answers are found in the new corporate model we’ve created and the principles articulated in The Responsibility Revolution.

1) The only real brand of responsibility is holistic and systemic—not compartmentalized. CR only works when it is strategic not programmatic and driven from both the top down and the bottom up. It balances concerns about justice and equity with efforts to enhance growth and profits, and pulls these values into every corner of a company to impact every process and decision, and offer new sources of innovation and opportunities for new products and services that deliver a return on purpose as well as a return on investment.

2) Authentic companies must build a collective corporate consciousness and embed it into every molecule of their DNA. As our own experience at Seventh Generation has shown, this is a long-term process. It starts by achieving collective clarity about what matters and constructing a communal view of what the company should be. Once this self-awareness is established, it can be brought to bear on decision-making to ensure that a company walks its talk in every way.

3) Our mission is our primary product. At Seventh Generation, we’ve come to understand that our purpose and values are far more important than our products. In our view, strategy is synonymous with advocacy. In standing for something that truly matters, we’re sharply distinguishing ourselves in the marketplace and making differences that couldn’t be made if we played the same game as everyone else.

4) Businesses must create meaning at work and unleash people’s potential. We’re dedicated to offering opportunities for our employees to realize their deeper aspirations and providing work that fulfills higher goals in addition to traditional financial aims. We view our company as a community in which our employees are animated by a larger sense of purpose and as a result act more like the individual entrepreneurs our company needs them to be.

5) Radical transparency is required. Information technologies now let the public keep an eye on everything we do, and we invite this scrutiny. Publicly sharing all our activities pre-empts our critics, and more eyes on our activities means more advocates and friends. Radical transparency also creates new partnerships and in this way becomes the first step towards overcoming the deficiencies that ultimately harm our profitability.

In forging these new principles and putting them to work throughout our company, we’ve been able to accomplish things that would likely not have otherwise been possible or at the very least would have been a lot more difficult—from finding a talented new CEO willing to relocate to Vermont and raising new capital for our continuing expansion to innovating our product line and maintaining a high level of employee productivity. The evidence speaks for itself: Over the past decade of cutthroat competition, the last two years of which have been marked by massive unemployment, widespread business closures, and other symptoms of the worst economic climate in generations, we achieved an enviable average growth rate of 30% per year, and we did it because we dared to find a different way to work.

Study after study shows that similar rewards will come to the companies that follow our lead and adopt the principles and models of Corporate Responsibility 2.0 laid out in The Responsibility Revolution. Fixed within this new way are the answers to a host of looming challenges the new normal presents. CR 2.0 prevents problems, enhances performance, and most importantly of all, makes the world a healthier, happier, and more sustainable place. That’s good for all of us. And all it will take to get there is business realizing what’s now best for itself.