Tag: Strategy & Integration

To Drive Sustainability, Look Inward: Results from the BSR/GlobeScan Survey 2013

Today’s results from the fifth annual BSR/GlobeScan State of Sustainable Business Survey 2013 underscore one message loud and clear: the importance of collaboration in addressing critical sustainability challenges. The timing of the results couldn’t be better, given the “Power of Networks” theme that we’ll be celebrating next week at the BSR Conference 2013 in San Francisco.

Representing input from more than 700 business leaders from BSR’s global member network, the survey reveals that collaboration occurs most regularly and easily with NGOs, industry organizations, and other companies. Collaboration with government is seen as most difficult (though very important). And while the survey highlights the need for business to engage with external stakeholders in addressing critical global sustainability issues, it also reveals important findings about another form of collaboration that is critical to achieving sustainability:internal collaboration with core business functions.

Results reveal that significant integration of sustainability has taken place only within approximately one in five companies surveyed. Engagement between sustainability functions and core corporate functions actually decreased over the past two years for a number of strategic functions.This represents a significant challenge to truly integrating sustainability into corporate strategy and to ensuring that external collaborations are successful. Fewer than 50 percent of sustainability executives rated the following functions as engaged in their work: operations, legal, investor relations, finance, R&D, HR, marketing, or strategic planning. It is also noteworthy that only 45 percent of respondents rated their board as being engaged in their sustainability priorities.

When we think about networks, we often focus on the external ones—and it is true that the sustainable business community engages in a great deal of valuable public-private partnerships, stakeholder engagement, and industry collaboration. Yet when we review these findings, it appears as though more foundational networks still need to be built within companies.

Quite often, we hear from our members that they feel isolated in their efforts within their own company and that they work more often with external partners than their colleagues. This year’s survey reinforces this sentiment. External collaboration is important to driving systemic change on issues such as human rights and climate change, but internal engagement is just as vital to ensuring that a company’s policies, processes, and products are aligned with critical sustainability objectives. Sometimes it pays to keep the focus close to home—and to build collaboration from within.

Network-Based Change: An Insider’s Perspective

Several years ago, I flew to Guadalajara to facilitate a meeting of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), a group that, at the time, comprised approximately 40 companies, representing five tiers of the supply chain from retailers and electronics brands to contract manufacturers, all the way down to raw materials. Soon after the meeting got started, the group reached an impasse, and I ended up throwing out the entire agenda and shifting the discussion to what had led each company to commit to working together in the first place. The approach worked, and the EICC moved past the roadblock and has since become a committed, established organization with more than 75 member companies that work together to improve conditions in the global electronics supply chain.

In my eight years at BSR, I have been involved in many types of networks, and, as we prepare to celebrate the Power of Networks at the BSR Conference 2013, I have been thinking about the various experiences I have had with sustainability networks.

This story about the EICC underscores the typical experience of network-based change: It can take time to get everyone on board, but there is a powerful opportunity to make progress once that happens. I’ve facilitated collaborations in the electronics, pharmaceutical, media, and consumer products sectors, and they have several common themes. Driving change through a network is usually much slower than through single company actions, and the change typically doesn’t follow a linear path. Consensus-building, patience, creativity, and a focus on core principles help networks move beyond discussions to create impact.

The strength of a network is rooted in the knowledge, experience, and critical relationships that are often within the group. While it was important to the EICC to invite external perspectives and engage with different types of stakeholders, we didn’t have theoretical discussions about how suppliers might react; the suppliers were members of the group. This approach is critical to driving systemic change across an entire industry.

Working groups and other collaborative initiatives continue to be an important way that we drive progress at BSR, but we also use stakeholder networks on a daily basis to help individual companies understand key issues, improve performance, and create new products or services. When I first started at BSR, companies typically had very transactional relationships with stakeholders—asking them to provide one-off feedback and at times forming specific, project-based partnerships.

Today, I see leading companies that understand the need to build long-term, multidimensional relationships with stakeholders. One example is Western Union, with whom BSR worked to design and facilitate a process for the company to engage with external experts to identify solutions for social needs that also might grow its business. To date, we’ve held two summits, the first of which generated 20 new product and service ideas addressing educational needs. As a result, last year, Western Union’s “Education for Better” program was announced on the floor of the United Nations. Western Union took a risk with this approach, but it has helped the company build a long-term network of stakeholders that will help them push for social change, and reap business rewards as well.

There are many similar examples of how BSR and our member companies build and use networks, but perhaps the most important point is the opportunity to explore the BSR member network itself. Our global network of more than 250 companies includes thousands of individuals, each with their own personal and professional networks. I am excited to experience the power of these networks—live!—at the BSR Conference 2013. I hope to see you (and your network) in San Francisco this November.

Network-Based Change: An Insider’s Perspective | Blog | BSR.