Corporate Sustainability Should Start At Business School

As far as one can see, corporations aren't going away and will continue to play an extremely important role in society. That makes their relationship to the environment a critical issue.

Too often, environmentalists are reacting to what corporations do. Rather, we need to advance a more holistic school of social change in the business world.

That means we need to go to the roots of the corporate world and understand where businessmen and women are coming from. You heard me: Business schools.

The inspiration for this post comes first from a tremendous book that nails this topic— The Sustainable Business (available as a free download from the European Foundation for Management Development). The author, renowned scholar and businessman Jonathan T. Scott writes, "to understand sustainability it's essential to begin by first comprehending the big picture...Rather than building up from particulars to generals (the empiricist method), one must begin with generals—an in-place, intuitive wisdom of the logic behind thinking in the long-term, what it entails, and why it's important."

His theory doesn't only entail a big picture view of the environment, it entails a big picture view of the world, of which the environment is one critical component, but not the only one. For example, he argues that the environmental aspects of sustainability are devalued when they are compartmentalized. If you are reading this blog, caring for the environment may come easily and naturally to you. What I take from the book is that perhaps we need to work on expanding our vision of care in order to be more effective overall.

Introducing Sustainability into Business Schools and Businesses. And How One Student is Helping.

For more than 30 years, higher-education administrators and academics virtually ignored the subject of sustainability. Slowly, however, the idea of long-term thinking has begun to take hold -- prompted by the efforts of the green community and a growing concern over the rising costs of waste. Nowadays, sustainability is gradually being added to university curricula, largely because of student demand.

Scott himself, for example, happens to teach at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland (not far from me). There, he fought an on-again, off-again battle to introduce sustainability as a mainstream business course. However, with great demand from students after they got a taste of what this is about, he has been quite successful.

One of Scott's students, Piotr Jedrzejuk, whom I have personally come to know a bit, was so inspired that he went to Geneva to continue his studies with Walter Stahel—a man widely credited with founding the subject of contemporary industrial sustainability as we know it and who also coined the term cradle-to-cradle. Stahel is now the founder and director of The Product-Life Institute, Europe's oldest sustainability-based think tank. In the 30 years since its founding, the non-profit PLI has helped numerous businesses develop, and profit from, so-called closed-loop practices that minimize or even eliminate their waste.

Piotr, now noticing that most universities and businesses still do not truly understand sustainability, has now set about developing a unique service to educate them.

The non-profit Sustainable Business Performance (SBP) website is the result of Piotr's efforts. SBP is working to freely distribute research, education and application-oriented material through the site; contributors include scientists, researchers, and managers. The goal is to train a generation of business leaders who, through the efficient use of resources, are growing real long-term wealth while creating jobs and minimizing environmental degradation.

This project is just getting off the ground, though, and as all non-profits do, it is in need of support. Check out the site if you are interested in this kind of thing and consider donating to or contacting the organization about ways you could help. And, if you have connections to an educational program or business that might benefit from its materials, be proactive and use them.

Photo Credit: Winkyintheuk via flickr (CC license)

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