GREEN schmeen. Corporate social responsibility used to be condemned as “greenwash” by cynics who argued that corporate sponsored volunteering could not undo the environmental damage of drilling for oil or importing strawberries to the UK from Africa. But that’s all just small-minded talk to a new generation of MBA students excited by sustainability. They’re asking what business can do for the environment — and vice versa.
Sustainability should not be confused with do-gooding, says Katie Kross, the executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “We are really interested in the business case for sustainability. It’s about competitive advantage rather than corporate philantrophy. In that sense, it’s new.”
Sustainability means thinking beyond the bottom line to the “triple bottom line” of financial profitability, ecological integrity and social equity, says Kross. A former student at Kenan-Flagler Business School, Kross was an intern at the chemical company DuPont, where she worked on a project to develop environmentally friendly products for housing in northern Mexico. It’s just one example of how forward-thinking companies are integrating sustainability into business practice. “It’s a win-win for both business and the environment,” Kross says.
Sustainability isn’t only turning on America’s corporate leaders of the future. Laura Tyson, the dean of London Business School, which recently hosted its first sustainable careers conference, says: “Students are increasingly looking for opportunities not only to generate profit for themselves and their companies, but a career path that allows them to use their business training to answer some of the wider challenges facing the 21st century.”
Climate change has given the drive for sustainability new impetus and a higher visibility. Large multinationals such as Wal-Mart Stores have publicly proclaimed the need for environmentally sustainable business practices. A speech by Leo Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO and president, neatly sums up the change in business thinking.
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“Frankly, I thought the environment was the least relevant (issue),” said Scott. “(Wal-Mart) is recycling responsibly and we are not wasteful — so a Wal-Mart environment programme sounded more like a public relations campaign than substance to me. But we kept talking and as I learned more, a light bulb came on for me . . . and that’s a compact fluorescent light bulb.”
“Making money looks very different these days,” says Gideon Burrows, editor of the Ethical Careers Guide. It’s now much harder to distinguish the good guys in the corporate world. “It’s just as unethical to work for a charity when you haven’t done any research into how they invest their money as working for an oil company and blindly believing their PR,” he says.
ECO-WORKERS