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home / links / Articles - "The Sustainability Challenge"
In fact, such an event did occur in Sweden in 1992, when the OK Petroleum company successfully lobbied for an increase in the country's tax on leaded gasoline. This surprising action stemmed from OK's development of a high-octane (98) lead-free automobile fuel, which burned cleaner than other fuels while still maintaining high performance. The Swedish government agreed to the tax because it was in alignment with its own clean air policies and with international conventions that it supported. Since OK had the only lead-free product on the market, the gas tax gave the company a significant price advantage at the pumps. "The competition was forced to follow suit," explained OK's Per Wadstein, leading to cleaner air for all of Sweden.
Economy and ecology are often pitted against each other in the "profitability versus environment" debate. There is a perception that companies can either prosper financially or take care of the earth, but not both. However, as OK Petroleum showed, these pursuits do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, ecology and economy derive from the same Greek root, eco, meaning house. (Ecology stands for "study of the house," and economy means "management of the house.") This etymology suggests that the two concepts are not contradictory, but actually part of the same larger idea. How, then, can we study and manage our "house" (the earth) in ways that benefit both industry and society over the long term? The "Systems Thinking for a Sustainable Future" initiative, based at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, provides a set of principles, practices, and processes that recognize and reinforce the synergistic link between long-term economic and ecological development. It seeks to provide industrial decision-makers with both a conceptual framework and practical tools for building financially healthy companies that are also ecologically sustainable. In addition, the initiative attempts to foster learning environments in which various stakeholders can grapple with the larger issues of the day. The hope is that within these settings, the participants will create presently unimaginable solutions to some of the world's most intractable problems.
What do we mean by "sustainable"? A sustainable society is one that is self-perpetuating over the long term - meaning that it uses resources at a rate that does not exceed the rate at which they can be replenished, and that it produces waste materials at a pace that does not exceed the rate at which they can be reabsorbed by the environment. Within this framework, a sustainable organization can be described as a company that provides customers with goods and services for living a satisfying life, while maintaining both a healthy balance sheet and a healthy balance with the natural world. Creating environmentally sustainable business practices used to be considered a choice for businesses-an optional activity for those companies that had the time, energy, and interest. But now it is becoming a more mainstream concern, due to several trends:
How can business managers think systemically about a sustainable future? How can they balance needs for economic prosperity and ecological survival? To address these challenges, companies need to expand their current strategic thinking to include economic and ecological concerns -- creating what W. Edward Stead and Jean Garner Stead call "sustainability strategies." |
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