Sustainability Business Case Resources
The Sustainability Imperative, by David A. Lubin and Daniel C. Esty (The Harvard Business Review, 2010)
Most executives know that how they respond to the challenge of sustainability will profoundly affect the competitiveness—and perhaps even the survival—of their organizations. Yet most are flailing around, launching a hodgepodge of initiatives without any overarching vision or plan. That’s not because they don’t see sustainability as a strategic issue. Rather, it’s because they think they’re facing an unprecedented journey for which there is no road map.
“The Business Case for Environmental and Sustainability Employee Education” (National Environmental Education Foundation, 2010)
The “business case” — that is, the quantification of opportunities and risks — for environmental and sustainability education might not yet be heavy on data. But anecdotes from around the world give clear indications that teaching employees to conserve, recycle, improve efficiency and reduce waste, among other actions, have benefits for employees, companies and communities.
Six Key Lessons on Mapping Out a Business Case for Sustainability Initiatives (GreenBiz.com, October 20, 2009)
"Finding the business case" is the holy grail of corporate sustainability professionals. For over a decade they've set out to demonstrate the commercial benefits of social and environmental initiatives. So why is it so hard to find?
Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami, Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation (The Harvard Business Review, September 2009)
There’s no alternative to sustainable development. Even so, many companies are convinced that the more environment-friendly they become, the more the effort will erode their competitiveness. They believe it will add to costs and will not deliver immediate financial benefits. Talk long enough to CEOs, particularly in the United States or Europe, and their concerns will pour out: Making our operations sustainable and developing “green” products places us at a disadvantage vis-à-vis rivals in developing countries that don’t face the same pressures. Suppliers can’t provide green inputs or transparency; sustainable manufacturing will demand new equipment and processes; and customers will not pay more for eco-friendly products during a recession. That’s why most executives treat the need to become sustainable as a corporate social responsibility, divorced from business objectives.
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When Sustainability Means More than Green, Mckinsey Quarterly (July 2009)
Protecting the natural environment isn’t the whole story: companies must consider their social, economic, and cultural impact as well.
Adam Werbach became the Sierra Club’s youngest president in 1996, at 23. Yet by 2004, he argued in a widely discussed speech that environmentalism had hit a wall because it focused on green issues rather than a larger goal: sustainability. His willingness to help Wal-Mart’s efforts to achieve it made him still more controversial among environmentalists. Werbach is now CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, a consultancy arm of the global advertising firm dedicated to sustainability solutions. This article is adapted from his new book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
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Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder, “Greener and Cheaper,” (Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2009, sec. Business Insight)
For years, it was the conventional wisdom: If you improved quality, costs would also rise. But then companies discovered the opposite was true. By redesigning processes -- reducing mistakes, doing things right the first time -- companies could provide better products and services and cut their costs.
Now it's time to learn this lesson all over again, as it applies to going green.
Joel Mackower, The State of Green Business 2009 (Greenerworld Media, February 2009)
It was the best of times and — well, you know the rest. The greening of mainstream companies during 2008 continued more or less unabated on its multi-year trajectory, with a growing number of global companies joining in with increasingly more substantive commitments and achievements. But economic woes rocked corporate environmental strategy much as it did everything else, leading to cutbacks, layoffs, and uncertainty about how, and how much, companies would be able to invest in new technologies and initiatives to support green innovations or reduce their environmental impacts. All this during a time of transformation, as a new U.S. president and Congress prepared to unleash an unprecedented number of initiatives aimed at stimulating a new green economy.
Daniel Mahler et al., "Green Winners" The performance of sustainability-focused companies during the financial crisis (A.T. Kearney Inc., 2009)
As companies cut cost to get through the current global economic slowdown, there is often a temptation to abandon recent forays into sustainability. Yet a new A.T. Kearny analysis finds that companies committed to corporate sustainability practices are achieving above-average performance in the financial markets during this slowdown. So before tossing out those sustainability practices and initiatives, it might be wise to first determine the real value of the efforts - especially the possible rewards for staying the course.
Maurice Berns et al., The Business of Sustainability (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2009)
Sustainability is garnering ever-greater public attention and debate. The subject ranks high on the legislative agendas of most governments; media coverage of the topic has proliferated; and sustainability issues are of increasing concern to humankind. However, the business implications of sustainability merit greater scrutiny. Will sustainability change the competitive landscape and reshape the opportunities and threats that companies face? If so, how? How worried are executives and other stakeholders about the impact of sustainability efforts on the corporate bottom line? What, if anything, are companies doing now to capitalize on sustainability driven changes? And what strategies are they pursuing to position themselves competitively for the future?
Valuing Corporate Social Responsibility, McKinsey Global Survey Results, The McKinsey Quarterly (McKinsey and Company Quarterly, 2009)
Most companies see corporate social responsibility programs as a way to fulfill the contract between business and society. But do they create financial value?
Companies face increasing pressure from governments, competitors, and employees to play a leading role in addressing a wide array of environmental, social, and governance issues—ranging from climate change to obesity to human rights—in a company’s supply chain. Over the past 30 years, most of them have responded by developing corporate social responsibility or sustainability initiatives to fulfill their contract with society by addressing such issues.
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Corporate Citizenship, Profiting from a Sustainable Business, Economist Intelligence Unit (The Economist, 2008)
Corporate citizenship is becoming increasingly important to business sustainability. It provides benefits that are both tangible - such as reducing waste and increasing energy efficiency - and intangible - such as improved employee productivity. This report is based on the hypothesis that corporate citizenship can help to improve the bottom line.
CSR Practices Can Lead to Increased Profits, Two New Reports Find (GreenBiz.com, February 12, 2008)
Not only are more companies taking CSR practices seriously and implementing them across operations, those companies are more likely to see their value grow, according to two reports released yesterday from IBM and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, Strategy and Society - The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Responsibility (HBR Spotlight, The Harvard Business Review, December 2006)
Governments, activists, and the media have become adept at holding companies to account for the social consequences of their actions. In response, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an inescapable priority for business leaders in every country. Frequently, though, CSR efforts are counterproductive, for two reasons. First, they pit business against society, when in reality the two are interdependent. Second, they pressure companies to think of corporate social responsibility in generic ways instead of in the way most appropriate to their individual strategies. The fact is, the prevailing approaches to CSR are so disconnected from strategy as to obscure many great opportunities for companies to benefit society. What a terrible waste.
