Everyone Takes the Field: How 3M Encourages Employee Involvement in Promoting Sustainable Development

As with quality and innovation, sustainability must be supported by all employees. Sustainability requires a multi-level, multidisciplinary approach to the development of new products, reviews of existing products and processes, and efforts to help customers address environmental issues. 3M's Environmental, Health and Safety Management System – which follows principles of Life Cycle Management – is the company's primary tool for promoting sustainability. Leadership, communications and adequate resources are also needed if sustainability is to become rooted in a company's activities. 3M's Pollution Prevention Pays (3P) program, founded in 1975, provides an example of how these factors support sustainability. 3P, which seeks to eliminate pollution before it occurs, has spawned more than 4,750 projects worldwide, all of them proposed by employees. These projects have prevented the generation of 1.7 billion pounds of pollution and reduced costs by $850 million in the first year of implementation. 3P works because it encourages employees to use their first-hand knowledge of products and processes and then recognizes their efforts.     

Facility location decisions with environmental considerations: a case study from the petrochemical industry

The recently growing concerns of customers and governments about environmental protection and greenhouse gas reduction have forced companies to integrate the topic of environmental sustainability into their decision making. Facility location decisions are of special relevance in this respect because of their strategic nature. Furthermore, many different trade-offs must be considered, for example between operational costs and customer service. But as soon as environmental issues are concerned, other critical issues must be considered as well. Based on a case study from the petrochemical industry, this paper extends two basic facility location models and shows the impact of distribution network-design decisions on the economic and environmental performance of the company. The results show a trade-off between total (distribution) costs and transport carbon emissions.     

基于可持续性消费的企业质量价格决策研究

随着可持续性消费理念的普及,消费者愿意为可持续性生产的产品支付更高的价格,这种绿色商品溢价能快速传导到价值链上游,进而推动绿色产业升级。本文在信息非对称环境下建立了一个可持续性制造型企业及其消费者组成的供应链模型,研究可持续性消费者比例与可持续性偏好对企业质量价格决策的影响。研究结论如下：在完全信息下,当企业只服务可持续消费者时,企业的收益随可持续性消费者比例递增;在信息非对称时,可持续性消费者比例越大,企业分离时所付出的成本越高,因此可持续性投入高的企业越倾向于混同而不是分离。另外,消费者的可持续性偏好对企业来说总是有利的。但是信息非对称时,可持续性消费者比例越高,并不总是对企业有利。     

The 1995 Pension Reform: Equity,Sustainability and Indexation

In financial equilibrium, a pay-as-you-go pension system will offer yields (explicit or implicit) equal to the rate of growth of the incomes subject to the contribution levy or of reasonable proxies such as GDP. One virtue of the contribution-based award formula is that it makes this yield explicit, permitting immediate verification of the system's sustainability. A second virtue is that it ensures equal treatment of all participants. Without prejudicing the constraint of financial sustainability, a pension scheme may choose any one of an infinite number of pairs (combinations) of initial award and indexation rates; or, in other words, any of an infinite set of curves of the total benefit over time. The 1995 pension reform enacted under Lamberto Dini elected zero real indexation, thus permitting higher initial income replacement rates. Insofar as it will generate pension disparities depending on year of retirement, this choice is the likely prelude to creeping real indexation, or recurrent equalizations that will drive the overall yield on contributions above the GDP growth rate and violate the constraint of financial sustainability. Before insoluble problems arise, the reformed system must be amended to decrease income replacement rates to a level compatible with an indexation procedure (be it automatic or discretionary) for adjusting benefits to society's real living standards, as all main pension systems do. The article also criticizes other choices made in the formulation of the law that will prevent the reform from achieving its stated purposes.     

Governance of sustainable supply chains in the fast fashion industry

This paper examines the impact of corporate social responsibility behavior on the sustainability performance of focal companies and their partners in fast fashion supply chains. The attributes of sustainability and the mechanism of sustainability governance of the fast fashion supply chain are also discussed. From the perspective of strategic corporate social responsibility, we first analyze the motives for adopting sustainability governance in fast fashion supply chains, and identify seven competitive sustainable attributes of the fast fashion product based on sustainable development theory. Then, by establishing a sustainability governance framework, we identify seven factors that affect the sustainability governance decision-making and evaluate the efficiency and legitimacy mechanism of sustainability governance from internal and external perspectives. Finally, we explore the application of the governance mechanisms via a case study based on H&M’s seven sustainability commitments. The findings suggest that the core influence and centrality of a corporation should be strengthened from the perspective of internal governance, and stakeholders should collaborate to achieve sustainability governance throughout the entire fast fashion supply chain from the perspective of external governance.     

The effect of corporate governance on sustainability disclosure

Drawing on stakeholder theory, this paper examines the relationship of board composition, leadership and structure on sustainability disclosure. We discuss that good corporate governance and sustainability disclosure can be seen as complementary mechanisms of legitimacy that companies may use to dialogue with stakeholders. Specifically we claim that, as disclosure policies emanate from the board of directors, sustainability disclosure may be a function of the board attributes: we investigate the relationship between different characteristics of the board and sustainability disclosures among US and European companies. Our results show that in order to explain the effect of board composition on sustainability disclosure we need to go beyond the narrow and traditional distinction between insider and independent directors, focusing on the specific characteristics of each director.     

Corporate sustainability and risk

This study analyses the relationship between corporate sustainability and corporate risk. Different grades of sustainability are constructed from the inclusion of companies into sustainability indices and the number of years included. The grades are measured against variables of expected and unexpected risk and drivers of a sustainable company’s risk (sustainability risk). Based on the assumption that the level of sustainability impacts upon the dimension of risk, a sample of 167 European companies and different subsamples are assessed on available accounting data. However, the findings do not provide any clear evidence, suggesting that companies, once rated as sustainable, display similar patterns of risk and that a high degree of sustainability may be achieved without adverse impacts on risk and risk-adjusted return.     

The Impact of Lean Management Practices and Sustainably‐Oriented Innovation on Sustainability Performance of Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: Empirical Evidence from the UK

While lean management practices (LMP) help small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to be efficient, sustainability‐oriented innovation (SOI) facilitates adopting environmental and social practices. Although prior research looks into the effect of LMP on the economic performance (EP) of SMEs, less is known about the effect of LMP on sustainability (economic, environmental and social) performance. Studies on the effect of SOI on sustainability and economic performance are also scant. Additionally, examining the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (environmental and social practices) on both LMP and SOI achieving sustainability performance (SP) is rare. This research bridges these knowledge gaps by answering the question of how LMP, SOI, CSR practices, sustainability and economic performance are correlated. Through hypothesis testing using structural equation modelling, this study reveals the impact of LMP, SOI, CSR (environmental and social) practices on sustainability and economic performance. The study uses data from 119 SMEs within manufacturing industries in the Midlands, UK. The analysis reveals that LMP and SOI facilitate achieving both sustainability and economic performance, and SOI mediates LMP to achieve sustainability performance. Additionally, although CSR practices mediate LMP to achieve sustainability performance, they only borderline mediate SOI to achieve sustainability performance.     

Rethinking the Concept of Sustainability

The role of business ethics in developing more sustainable societies is crucial, but we first have to review the concept of sustainability itself and its ethical roots. The objective of this work is to rethink the current concept of sustainability by providing it with a sound universalistic ethical rationale. We propose that ethics is the key by which disputes and conflicts among the economic, social, and environmental domains can and ought to be resolved. This work argues that if we fail to recognize the essential ethical grounding of sustainability, or if we take it for granted, then sustainability can easily lose its way and can end up unjustified.     

Sustainability in the Internal Operations of Companies

This paper¹ examines the issue of sustainability in the internal operations of companies. It examines what sustainability means in the business context, looks at how the concept can be measured with an example applied to companies in Brazil and examines the economics of corporate sustainability. It briefly explores the business case and raises a number of issues and questions that need to be discussed further. The paper ends with a suggested memo of concrete actions that a forward looking CEO could write to the company's senior managers.     

Steps Towards Sustainable Development at Brødrene Hartmann A/S

In recent years a number of new demands on and expectations from companies have been put forward. These requirements involve the concept of sustainable development, which has emerged as a leading principle of the future. The principle requires companies like Brødrene Hartmann A/S to implement sustainable development throughout the entire organisation. This means that the environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability must be part of the overall mission and business policies of the organisation. In order to meet these new expectations Hartmann has developed global lifecycle based management models called the STEP-models. STEP stands for Sustainability Tools for the Entire Product chain. The STEP-model was formed with the objective of making holistic environmental and social work concrete, systematic and operational. Today it constitutes a joint management concept for Hartmann, and this concept is the Group's idea of how sustainable development can be implemented.     

The how and why of a firm’s approach to CSR and sustainability: a case study of a large European company

This paper aims to analyse “how” and “why” a company engages in CSR and sustainability. The “how” concerns the features of the firm’s CSR and sustainability approach, defined in terms of a firm’s strategy (implemented issues, initiatives and activities) and organization (organizational structures and roles and managerial systems adopted). The “why” refers to the key determinants, both internal and external, of CSR and sustainability. Finally, how the firm’s CSR and sustainability approach evolves over time and the relation between CSR determinants in various stages of the CSR evolutionary path are also investigated. The research method is based on the longitudinal analysis of a case study concerning a large multinational company operating in the telecommunications industry in Europe. The analysis of the case study shows that sub-cultural differences in the approach to CSR and sustainability may occur across hierarchical levels and functional units. Moreover, embedding CSR and sustainability principles doesn’t follow a linear and continuous process, made by sequential stages. Indeed, it can be characterized by an up and down evolutionary path, based on different stages with a changing emphasis given to CSR and sustainability issues. Finally, we find that the firm CSR and sustainability approach is not an autonomous choice, but it is a consequence of the contingent role played by both the external and the internal drivers and by their relative importance during the company’s CSR history.     

No going back: A review of the literature on sustaining organizational change

Why do some organizational changes persist, while others decay? The sustainability of change can be defined broadly as the process through which new working methods, performance goals and improvement trajectories are maintained for a period appropriate to a given context. However, sustainability has received limited attention, although the concept reflects Lewin's concern with ‘refreezing’ ( Lewin. K. 1951 . Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers by Kurt Lewin, UK edition published 1952, ed. D. Cartwright, London: Tavistock). In an uncertain environment, working practices that fail to adapt are targets for change, and stability has been regarded not as a condition to be achieved, but as a symptom of inertia, a problem to be solved. This paper reviews the emerging literature, seeking to develop a provisional model of the processes influencing change sustainability and decay, as a platform for further research. This review suggests that sustainability is dependent on multiple factors, at different levels of analysis: substantial, individual, managerial, financial, leadership, organizational, cultural, political, processual, contextual and temporal. The relative significance of those factors cannot be determined a priori, raising questions concerning the properties of the sustainability process with regard to different types of change in different contexts.     

Voluntary disclosure of sustainability reports by Canadian universities

In contrast to corporate firms, voluntary sustainability reporting by universities is still in its infancy. Against this background, we have investigated which Canadian universities report their sustainability performance and what specifically is reported. Our study applies content analyses as a methodological approach to determine the relative importance of disclosure topics by using a university-specific catalogue of indicators. This unique study completely covers all sustainability reports published between 2011 and 2015 by Canadian universities and as such provides evidence and analyses of voluntary sustainability reporting by universities, which has been the subject of very little research to date. The findings show that sustainability reporting by Canadian universities diverges considerably and the range of aspects included is relatively narrow. Overall, the results show a clear focus on the environmental dimension and very weak coverage of the social dimension. The environmental orientation of many Canadian universities seems to be a result of their participation in the STARS program.     

How organizational logics shape trade-off decision-making in sustainability

Tensions between economic, environmental, and social performance are inherent to the practice of corporate sustainability. These sustainability tensions present the company with strategic choices. Using an organizational cognition perspective, we posit that companies interpret and respond to these tensions in ways that reflect an underlying collective sustainability logic. The purpose of this research is to explore this link, and to describe the logics that companies use when approaching sustainability tensions—and in doing so, explore what this reveals about the nature of the logics themselves. To achieve this, we perform a qualitative content analysis of interviews with sustainability managers, as well as archival documents. We find that all companies, regardless of their sustainability logic, encounter tensions in the practice of sustainability. In navigating these tensions, companies following a market-led logic tended to consider a narrow scope of stakeholder interests in their sustainability decision-making. These companies also followed a mutually-exclusive (and unintegrated) ‘if/then’ approach to sustainability tensions. On the other hand, companies that followed a holistic logic tended to consider a much wider scope of stakeholders and displayed a higher degree of integration in their logic (i.e., synergetic approach to decision-making around tensions).     

Strategic approaches to sustainability in fashion supply chain management

Today, the sustainability challenge has become a relevant issue in the fashion industry. However, given that the request for sustainability is relatively new in this industry, empirical research that could guide companies towards supply chain sustainability is lacking. This study aims to deepen the understanding of the main strategic approaches to sustainability used in fashion supply chain management (SCM). Ten case studies were examined in terms of the practices that characterise these approaches. Moreover, contextual factors, drivers and barriers that support or hinder different approaches were identified. To accomplish this goal, both environmental sustainability and social sustainability were investigated, and all the areas of fashion SCM (i.e. new product development, source, make, deliver, retail, return, governance) were considered simultaneously to offer a wide overview of this industry’s sustainability issue.     

Competition and Sustainability: The Impact of Consumer Awareness

Sustainability, a broad concept that includes numerous environmental and social dimensions, has emerged as an important product evaluation criterion for consumers. We suggest the impact of sustainability on consumer behavior depends on two factors—each individual consumer's unique level of concern about sustainability, and the general level of awareness regarding the sustainability of competing products—that together determine the level of heterogeneity among consumer attitudes toward sustainability. We incorporate sustainability concern and awareness into a model of horizontal competition in a duopoly, where one firm's product is more sustainable than the other's. Our results suggest that marginal increases in awareness can benefit all firms, including the less sustainable one, when awareness is sufficiently high (the explicit goal of recent sustainability labeling initiatives). In several model extensions, we provide additional insights for the following cases: the sustainable firm controls the extent of its sustainability advantage, the sustainable firm can directly influence the general level of awareness, and the distribution of sustainability concern across consumers is nonuniform. Our results enable us to suggest several new insights for managers, both those whose products enjoy a sustainability advantage and those whose products do not.     

Spatial Optimization of Future Urban Development with Regards to Climate Risk and Sustainability Objectives

Future development in cities needs to manage increasing populations, climate‐related risks, and sustainable development objectives such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Planners therefore face a challenge of multidimensional, spatial optimization in order to balance potential tradeoffs and maximize synergies between risks and other objectives. To address this, a spatial optimization framework has been developed. This uses a spatially implemented genetic algorithm to generate a set of Pareto‐optimal results that provide planners with the best set of trade‐off spatial plans for six risk and sustainability objectives: (i) minimize heat risks, (ii) minimize flooding risks, (iii) minimize transport travel costs to minimize associated emissions, (iv) maximize brownfield development, (v) minimize urban sprawl, and (vi) prevent development of greenspace. The framework is applied to Greater London (U.K.) and shown to generate spatial development strategies that are optimal for specific objectives and differ significantly from the existing development strategies. In addition, the analysis reveals tradeoffs between different risks as well as between risk and sustainability objectives. While increases in heat or flood risk can be avoided, there are no strategies that do not increase at least one of these. Tradeoffs between risk and other sustainability objectives can be more severe, for example, minimizing heat risk is only possible if future development is allowed to sprawl significantly. The results highlight the importance of spatial structure in modulating risks and other sustainability objectives. However, not all planning objectives are suited to quantified optimization and so the results should form part of an evidence base to improve the delivery of risk and sustainability management in future urban development.     

Humanizing strategy

In this article, we apply our latest thinking on knowledge to provide insights on how to reconceptualize strategy to cope with a VUCA world, epitomized recently by COVID-19. We demonstrate that business leaders must draw on phronesis, or practical wisdom, for strategy to become more future-oriented, society-focused, dynamic, and human-centric. Using in-depth case studies, we show how companies will survive in the long run if they start with a moral purpose, and end by offering value to customers, contributing to society, living in harmony with nature, and creating a new and better future. We came up with six practices that enable business leaders to create new and better futures, citing evidences from neuroscience. We conclude that humans should be at the center of strategy, driving future-making with the help of digital-led automation. Reconceptualizing strategy based on this “inside-out” approach, the reward to the company is resilience, longevity, and sustainability.     

Breaking the Ties That Bind: From Corporate Sustainability to Socially Sustainable Systems

Although the recent push toward sustainability is certainly generally a positive development in business and society, we can see many problems in the execution of the theory of sustainability. Where the triple bottom line calls on companies to weigh effects on stakeholders and the environment alongside profit, in practice in many cases, sustainability has been perverted to represent sustainable profits. In these cases, environmental impact and effects on people are only important insofar as they positively contribute to a firm‘s future profits. It is not only practitioners who have often espoused this misappropriated view of sustainability but also academics have lent credibility to this view. In this work, we start by criticizing the often espoused current view of sustainability and remind academics of their responsibility to adapt a more critical view of this narrow focus. We provide examples that show how the current system of capitalism has resulted in outcomes for people and the environment that are patently unacceptable. Reasons are given as to why there is much hesitation to change the status quo. We then call on academics to reexamine what the role of businesses should be within society, what obligations business and corporations should have in society, and how we can encourage meaningful change that results in a better world for future generations.