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  • 1.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-23-2010 12:52

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail


  • 2.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-23-2010 18:32
    Hi Bruce

    It seems that sustainability is integrated into many or most of the activities of a majority of organizations, and that its effects extend well into the future (decades out for most organizations), this would seem to meet the definition of strategy versus tactics. Sustainability decisions should address long-term factors such as input material trends, costs of operations, product life cycle considerations, etc.

    As a practitioner focusing on greenhouse gases/climate change within the larger context of sustainability for my organization, the kinds of questions and issues that we are wrestling with right now are clearly strategic in nature, having profound impacts on how the Navy conducts its operations decades into the future. Hey, our near-term planning horizon for GHG emissions in California is 2020 and affects many segments of the economy! And we need to plan for it now! (The long-term planning horizon is 2050.) How can that be tactical??? :-)

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers
    Greg Lorton, P.E., D.B.A.
    Air Quality Program Manager
    Navy Region Southwest
    937 Pacific Highway, Room S510
    San Diego, CA 92132
    619-532-2921
    gregory.lorton@navy.mil

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Clemens
    Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 9:52
    To: ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses. My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy. I'd appreciate any help, especially citations. Thanks.

    Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail


  • 3.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-23-2010 18:48

    Bruce,

    A review of Nike's most recent CR report will make it clear that its management views sustainability as strategic: http://www.nikebiz.com/crreport/.  It includes video interviews with Nike's CEO and CFO and an explanation of 'a new model and shift to sustainable business and innovation'.

    Cheers,
    Scott

    --

    Scott Marshall
    Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research
    School of Business
    Portland State University

    503-725-4842
    scottm@sba.pdx.edu
    www.pdx.edu/sba




  • 4.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-23-2010 19:47
    Show him my thesis:
    http://intergon.net/phd - how CEOs deal with sustainability issues (CEOs
    from a petrochemical, very large municipality, enormous entertainment
    complex, research and development business, manufacturer, and service
    all spoke with me in strategic terms regarding how they deal with
    sustainability). How about Interface Carpet founder???? He had an
    epithany, which he translated into a new strategic direction.

    On a single page, you can see:
    http://intergon.net/tsw/sustainableceos.pdf

    Of course, sustainability, quality and safety are all obligatory and
    externally imposed issues (OEI) that are not core to the organisation.
    You can extrapolate from my thesis how OEI issues can be treated well as
    strategic issues or very badly as tactical issues. I see this sort of
    variation between the various organisations I audit (I audit about 100
    organisations per year).

    I am at a business now that has incorporated OEI issues in strategic
    management. KPIs are established at the Group HQ and cascaded
    throughout the world in their organisation. A wonderful system that is
    complied with, easy to audit, and one that generates significant savings
    to the organisation. On the other hand, tactical approaches to OEI
    issues tend to create excessive costs. (For sustainability to be
    effectively dealt with it must be considered in the formation of
    strategic KPIs.

    What would I know, I just did a PhD on the subject and spent the last 25
    years developing and auditing systems to manage a range of OEI issues.

    I met a CEO in 1990 who admitted that the biggest mistake he made in his
    career was thinking that OEI issues were a waste of time. He changed
    his mind and the organisation went on to develop some solid strategic
    approaches to dealing with these issues. My impression is that your
    dean is just making the biggest mistake in his career, mind you I would
    not go as far as saying he is starting WWIII or engaging in canibalism
    ;-)

    Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
    Associate of RMIT University - lionel.boxer@rmit.edu.au
    Graduate School of Business
    my "Assessment of Quality Systems with Positioning Theory"
    now in a googe book - see link at http://intergon.net
    >>> Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM> 24/02/10 10:10 AM >>>
    I’m trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be
    taught in all strategy courses. My Dean offers that sustainability is
    more
    a tactic than a strategy. I’d appreciate any help, especially
    citations. Thanks…


    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this
    e-mail


  • 5.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-24-2010 05:40
    Dear Bruce,
     
    Oh Yes, I remember that question from the interview for Chair I had years ago.
     
    Try asking your Dean why they think companies engage in strategy at all. The answer is that companies do long-term orientated things like build relationships with customers and other stakeholders, gather information about external trends and try to decide what the future might hold, invest in training and developing their human resources etc etc for one key purpose - to try and stay in business tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. If the purposes of business really was to maximise short-term profit you would just screw all the customers for every penny, default on every debt and exploit then summarily dismiss your staff. Business engages in strategy on the Confuscian logic that 'He who does not consider what is far off, will find trouble close at hand' - there are major surveys (McKinsey did one a couple of years ago) where top business leaders identify environmental challenges as the key strategic threats to their businesses. Does your Dean really think they know more about corporate strategy than them.
     
    You might also ask them why they think Enron went bust, General Motors is a dead corp walking and why Lehman Brothers doesn't exist anymore - the simple answer being that their business models/strategies were ultimately not sustainable - economically, socially and/or environmentally (law breaking, excessive risk taking and inappropriate product range decisions being the symptoms rather than the disease).
     
    The logic of sustainability is the logic of strategy - developing a set of resources and stakeholder relationships that can allow the business to survive and thrive in the (very) long-term (which in the full sustainability context means existing within a society and economy that can also survive and thrive because we learn to avoid the collective over-exploitation of ecological resources and other people. Whether we can get there onboard a spaceship crewed by 6.6 Billion and rising is a different question for a different course I'd suggest).
     
    Sounds like your Dean (a) Doesn't know about/understand strategy, and is confusing the big issues and questions that business now face with companies seeking to use sustainability credentials to generate short-term competitive advantage or shine their corporate image - possibly through a bit of greenwashing - which you could argue reflects superficial tactics rather than core strategy and (b) has employed what I identified back in 1994 as Academic BATNEEC syndrome - Best Available Teaching Not Entailing Excessive Change  (although not sure the embedded nearly-joke there translates outside the UK) - ie Why bother to actually change a course we've been teaching pretty much the same way for the last 25 years, when you can get a guest lecturer to come in and talk about sustainability issues in lecture 20 out of 20 weeks ?
     
    I tried to put the strategy and sustainability arguments in a reasonably neat nutshell in Chapter 25 of the Sage Handbook of 21st Century Management that Charles edited - it was entitled Toward Sustainable Organizations for the 21st Century.
     
    Alternatively - you could suggest settling it through a contest. Get a grad student or similar to go through the annual reports for the top 30 US companies and tally up every statement indicating that sustainability issues are of strategic importance, and every statement indicating that they are only a tactical concern and see who wins !
     
    On a slightly different topic - and back to what should and shouldn't be posted on the ONE List-serve. The experience of climate scientists in the UK suggests that things you email can come back to haunt you. If using the word 'trick' to describe a statistical technique (hands up all those who've never done that !) in a private email can lead to you being publicly branded a fraudulent scholar and member of a global conspiracy for bad global climate science - then one day, when you're trying to influence something for the good, is there a risk that an ironic posting turns into 'Pro-sustainability academic (or academic organisation) 's secret shameful past promoting global genocide' becomes the media headline ? It might sound far-fetched - but the experience of some scholars here is that years of dedicated scholarship can be pretty nastily tainted in the media by the fall-out from a casually worded private email amongst colleagues. The principle of free speech within academic debate is important - but it might come with an expensive price-tag if further down the road people with an axe to grind seek to discredit you and your whole field of research because you chose to play devil's advocate or attempted irony via a keyboard (always tricky).
     
    Just a thought ......
     
    Best wishes to all.
     
    Ken.
     

    Professor Ken Peattie,

    Director, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Cardiff University,

    55 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

    02920 876562

    website: www.brass.cf.ac.uk

     

     
     
     

     
    -----Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> wrote: -----

    To: ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    From: Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM>
    Sent by: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
    Date: 02/23/2010 05:52PM
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail



  • 6.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-24-2010 08:59

    Greetings all,

    I can't say how impressed I was with your responses to my query.  Indeed it is a reaffirmation of the type of members we have in ONE.  We have probably each faced this issue in different contexts.  I imagine those of you teaching OB have also considered how to incorporate sustainability into your curricula.  I happen to be a strategy type, so my Dean was questioning why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course.  Lorton, Lionel, Ann, Nancy, Scott and Marshall all added substantively to the thread.  I was also impressed at the level of cooperation and the interrelated thread that each of you wove.  Don't you love to hear that in our classes?  For me, the quintessential example of positive class participation is a comment such as  – "Building upon Marcy's point that .... and Ben's argument that ....  I'd offer...."

    I also offer that this would make a great paper: how to integrate sustainability in the entire b-school (if not university-wide) curriculum.  The AASHE hosts "Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshops" - http://www.aashe.org/profdev/curriculum.php.  I participated in one last summer and I am planning to host a similar workshop on our campus later this spring.  I highly recommend attending one of the AASHE workshops, especially if you can find another one in AnaheimJ...    

    Kudos to Charles for making these discussions possible and for all of you for participating.  I will keep you informed of my negotiations with my Dean.

    Best regards,

    Bruce  


    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Ken Peattie <Peattie@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:
    Dear Bruce,
     
    Oh Yes, I remember that question from the interview for Chair I had years ago.
     
    Try asking your Dean why they think companies engage in strategy at all. The answer is that companies do long-term orientated things like build relationships with customers and other stakeholders, gather information about external trends and try to decide what the future might hold, invest in training and developing their human resources etc etc for one key purpose - to try and stay in business tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. If the purposes of business really was to maximise short-term profit you would just screw all the customers for every penny, default on every debt and exploit then summarily dismiss your staff. Business engages in strategy on the Confuscian logic that 'He who does not consider what is far off, will find trouble close at hand' - there are major surveys (McKinsey did one a couple of years ago) where top business leaders identify environmental challenges as the key strategic threats to their businesses. Does your Dean really think they know more about corporate strategy than them.
     
    You might also ask them why they think Enron went bust, General Motors is a dead corp walking and why Lehman Brothers doesn't exist anymore - the simple answer being that their business models/strategies were ultimately not sustainable - economically, socially and/or environmentally (law breaking, excessive risk taking and inappropriate product range decisions being the symptoms rather than the disease).
     
    The logic of sustainability is the logic of strategy - developing a set of resources and stakeholder relationships that can allow the business to survive and thrive in the (very) long-term (which in the full sustainability context means existing within a society and economy that can also survive and thrive because we learn to avoid the collective over-exploitation of ecological resources and other people. Whether we can get there onboard a spaceship crewed by 6.6 Billion and rising is a different question for a different course I'd suggest).
     
    Sounds like your Dean (a) Doesn't know about/understand strategy, and is confusing the big issues and questions that business now face with companies seeking to use sustainability credentials to generate short-term competitive advantage or shine their corporate image - possibly through a bit of greenwashing - which you could argue reflects superficial tactics rather than core strategy and (b) has employed what I identified back in 1994 as Academic BATNEEC syndrome - Best Available Teaching Not Entailing Excessive Change  (although not sure the embedded nearly-joke there translates outside the UK) - ie Why bother to actually change a course we've been teaching pretty much the same way for the last 25 years, when you can get a guest lecturer to come in and talk about sustainability issues in lecture 20 out of 20 weeks ?
     
    I tried to put the strategy and sustainability arguments in a reasonably neat nutshell in Chapter 25 of the Sage Handbook of 21st Century Management that Charles edited - it was entitled Toward Sustainable Organizations for the 21st Century.
     
    Alternatively - you could suggest settling it through a contest. Get a grad student or similar to go through the annual reports for the top 30 US companies and tally up every statement indicating that sustainability issues are of strategic importance, and every statement indicating that they are only a tactical concern and see who wins !
     
    On a slightly different topic - and back to what should and shouldn't be posted on the ONE List-serve. The experience of climate scientists in the UK suggests that things you email can come back to haunt you. If using the word 'trick' to describe a statistical technique (hands up all those who've never done that !) in a private email can lead to you being publicly branded a fraudulent scholar and member of a global conspiracy for bad global climate science - then one day, when you're trying to influence something for the good, is there a risk that an ironic posting turns into 'Pro-sustainability academic (or academic organisation) 's secret shameful past promoting global genocide' becomes the media headline ? It might sound far-fetched - but the experience of some scholars here is that years of dedicated scholarship can be pretty nastily tainted in the media by the fall-out from a casually worded private email amongst colleagues. The principle of free speech within academic debate is important - but it might come with an expensive price-tag if further down the road people with an axe to grind seek to discredit you and your whole field of research because you chose to play devil's advocate or attempted irony via a keyboard (always tricky).
     
    Just a thought ......
     
    Best wishes to all.
     
    Ken.
     

    Professor Ken Peattie,

    Director, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Cardiff University,

    55 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

    02920 876562

    website: www.brass.cf.ac.uk

     

     
     
     

     
    -----Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> wrote: -----

    From: Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM>
    Sent by: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
    Date: 02/23/2010 05:52PM
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"


    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail




    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail


  • 7.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-24-2010 09:30

    Bruce,

     

    I agree with you that the responses you have received to this query were on target, sustainability as a 'tactic' is not appropriate or accurate.  But, one there is still the other comment from your Dean that probably needs addressing and discussion "why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course".   

     

    I think the Dean's concern in this case may be related to a keeping balance with other management topics in a capstone course.  We as ONE'rs would probably like to see more sustainability integrated into the capstone course.  But others might feel it is one of many possible strategies an organization can follow and not necessarily be the core element of the capstone.   I am not sure if there are AACSB accreditation requirements related to capstones and what should be included in them. The Dean might be under the impression that one topic should not subsume all the other topics for managing an organization.  Also, this might be the Dean's course because it is meant to cover all the disciplines within a school of business. 

     

    So basically an alternative question (rather than sustainability being tactical or strategic, which is clear to most of us) is: How much sustainability should be included in a capstone course? 

     

    -Joe

     

     

     

    From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Clemens
    Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:59 AM
    To: ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    Greetings all,

    I can't say how impressed I was with your responses to my query.  Indeed it is a reaffirmation of the type of members we have in ONE.  We have probably each faced this issue in different contexts.  I imagine those of you teaching OB have also considered how to incorporate sustainability into your curricula.  I happen to be a strategy type, so my Dean was questioning why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course.  Lorton, Lionel, Ann, Nancy, Scott and Marshall all added substantively to the thread.  I was also impressed at the level of cooperation and the interrelated thread that each of you wove.  Don't you love to hear that in our classes?  For me, the quintessential example of positive class participation is a comment such as  – "Building upon Marcy's point that .... and Ben's argument that ....  I'd offer...."

    I also offer that this would make a great paper: how to integrate sustainability in the entire b-school (if not university-wide) curriculum.  The AASHE hosts "Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshops" - http://www.aashe.org/profdev/curriculum.php.  I participated in one last summer and I am planning to host a similar workshop on our campus later this spring.  I highly recommend attending one of the AASHE workshops, especially if you can find another one in AnaheimJ...   

    Kudos to Charles for making these discussions possible and for all of you for participating.  I will keep you informed of my negotiations with my Dean.

    Best regards,

    Bruce 

     

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Ken Peattie <Peattie@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:

    Dear Bruce,

     

    Oh Yes, I remember that question from the interview for Chair I had years ago.

     

    Try asking your Dean why they think companies engage in strategy at all. The answer is that companies do long-term orientated things like build relationships with customers and other stakeholders, gather information about external trends and try to decide what the future might hold, invest in training and developing their human resources etc etc for one key purpose - to try and stay in business tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. If the purposes of business really was to maximise short-term profit you would just screw all the customers for every penny, default on every debt and exploit then summarily dismiss your staff. Business engages in strategy on the Confuscian logic that 'He who does not consider what is far off, will find trouble close at hand' - there are major surveys (McKinsey did one a couple of years ago) where top business leaders identify environmental challenges as the key strategic threats to their businesses. Does your Dean really think they know more about corporate strategy than them.

     

    You might also ask them why they think Enron went bust, General Motors is a dead corp walking and why Lehman Brothers doesn't exist anymore - the simple answer being that their business models/strategies were ultimately not sustainable - economically, socially and/or environmentally (law breaking, excessive risk taking and inappropriate product range decisions being the symptoms rather than the disease).

     

    The logic of sustainability is the logic of strategy - developing a set of resources and stakeholder relationships that can allow the business to survive and thrive in the (very) long-term (which in the full sustainability context means existing within a society and economy that can also survive and thrive because we learn to avoid the collective over-exploitation of ecological resources and other people. Whether we can get there onboard a spaceship crewed by 6.6 Billion and rising is a different question for a different course I'd suggest).

     

    Sounds like your Dean (a) Doesn't know about/understand strategy, and is confusing the big issues and questions that business now face with companies seeking to use sustainability credentials to generate short-term competitive advantage or shine their corporate image - possibly through a bit of greenwashing - which you could argue reflects superficial tactics rather than core strategy and (b) has employed what I identified back in 1994 as Academic BATNEEC syndrome - Best Available Teaching Not Entailing Excessive Change  (although not sure the embedded nearly-joke there translates outside the UK) - ie Why bother to actually change a course we've been teaching pretty much the same way for the last 25 years, when you can get a guest lecturer to come in and talk about sustainability issues in lecture 20 out of 20 weeks ?

     

    I tried to put the strategy and sustainability arguments in a reasonably neat nutshell in Chapter 25 of the Sage Handbook of 21st Century Management that Charles edited - it was entitled Toward Sustainable Organizations for the 21st Century.

     

    Alternatively - you could suggest settling it through a contest. Get a grad student or similar to go through the annual reports for the top 30 US companies and tally up every statement indicating that sustainability issues are of strategic importance, and every statement indicating that they are only a tactical concern and see who wins !

     

    On a slightly different topic - and back to what should and shouldn't be posted on the ONE List-serve. The experience of climate scientists in the UK suggests that things you email can come back to haunt you. If using the word 'trick' to describe a statistical technique (hands up all those who've never done that !) in a private email can lead to you being publicly branded a fraudulent scholar and member of a global conspiracy for bad global climate science - then one day, when you're trying to influence something for the good, is there a risk that an ironic posting turns into 'Pro-sustainability academic (or academic organisation) 's secret shameful past promoting global genocide' becomes the media headline ? It might sound far-fetched - but the experience of some scholars here is that years of dedicated scholarship can be pretty nastily tainted in the media by the fall-out from a casually worded private email amongst colleagues. The principle of free speech within academic debate is important - but it might come with an expensive price-tag if further down the road people with an axe to grind seek to discredit you and your whole field of research because you chose to play devil's advocate or attempted irony via a keyboard (always tricky).

     

    Just a thought ......

     

    Best wishes to all.

     

    Ken.

     

    Professor Ken Peattie,

    Director, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Cardiff University,

    55 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

    02920 876562

    website: www.brass.cf.ac.uk

     

     

     

     


     

    -----Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> wrote: -----

    From: Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM>
    Sent by: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
    Date: 02/23/2010 05:52PM
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail

     




    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail



  • 8.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-24-2010 09:51
    Hi Joe and all:

    So, I am curious - to me sustainability represents a Paradigm shift (e.g., Thomas Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) and as such represents a lifestyle change. Shades of green, so to speak, are intermediary steps to a holistic way of living/working/doing business different from how we operate today, with greater sensitivity and stewardship of the natural environment; people, place, flora, and fauna. If it is a paradigm shift, think of all the business cases we all have taught (The Swiss Watch Industry and Swatch as one main example) that told us if we didn't get on board, we'd die and not even know why till after the fact... If anyone should be understanding of and amenable to change, it should be us - the leaders of thought and intellectuals of society who create the direction of this change via research and manage it through education. It all just makes me wonder. Maybe I have just been reading too many of Jane Goodall's books lately, and am naively passionate, but I believe that sustainability concepts should be interwoven throughout as much of our b-curriculum as possible and not tacked on as "additional chapters that tell us about the what's coming next." I really don't see this one going away.
     
    With Kind Regards,
    Ann

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Joseph Sarkis <jsarkis@clarku.edu> wrote:

    Bruce,

     

    I agree with you that the responses you have received to this query were on target, sustainability as a 'tactic' is not appropriate or accurate.  But, one there is still the other comment from your Dean that probably needs addressing and discussion "why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course".   

     

    I think the Dean's concern in this case may be related to a keeping balance with other management topics in a capstone course.  We as ONE'rs would probably like to see more sustainability integrated into the capstone course.  But others might feel it is one of many possible strategies an organization can follow and not necessarily be the core element of the capstone.   I am not sure if there are AACSB accreditation requirements related to capstones and what should be included in them. The Dean might be under the impression that one topic should not subsume all the other topics for managing an organization.  Also, this might be the Dean's course because it is meant to cover all the disciplines within a school of business. 

     

    So basically an alternative question (rather than sustainability being tactical or strategic, which is clear to most of us) is: How much sustainability should be included in a capstone course? 

     

    -Joe

     

     

     

    From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Clemens
    Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:59 AM

    Subject: Re: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    Greetings all,

    I can't say how impressed I was with your responses to my query.  Indeed it is a reaffirmation of the type of members we have in ONE.  We have probably each faced this issue in different contexts.  I imagine those of you teaching OB have also considered how to incorporate sustainability into your curricula.  I happen to be a strategy type, so my Dean was questioning why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course.  Lorton, Lionel, Ann, Nancy, Scott and Marshall all added substantively to the thread.  I was also impressed at the level of cooperation and the interrelated thread that each of you wove.  Don't you love to hear that in our classes?  For me, the quintessential example of positive class participation is a comment such as  – "Building upon Marcy's point that .... and Ben's argument that ....  I'd offer...."

    I also offer that this would make a great paper: how to integrate sustainability in the entire b-school (if not university-wide) curriculum.  The AASHE hosts "Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshops" - http://www.aashe.org/profdev/curriculum.php.  I participated in one last summer and I am planning to host a similar workshop on our campus later this spring.  I highly recommend attending one of the AASHE workshops, especially if you can find another one in AnaheimJ...   

    Kudos to Charles for making these discussions possible and for all of you for participating.  I will keep you informed of my negotiations with my Dean.

    Best regards,

    Bruce 

     

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Ken Peattie <Peattie@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:

    Dear Bruce,

     

    Oh Yes, I remember that question from the interview for Chair I had years ago.

     

    Try asking your Dean why they think companies engage in strategy at all. The answer is that companies do long-term orientated things like build relationships with customers and other stakeholders, gather information about external trends and try to decide what the future might hold, invest in training and developing their human resources etc etc for one key purpose - to try and stay in business tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. If the purposes of business really was to maximise short-term profit you would just screw all the customers for every penny, default on every debt and exploit then summarily dismiss your staff. Business engages in strategy on the Confuscian logic that 'He who does not consider what is far off, will find trouble close at hand' - there are major surveys (McKinsey did one a couple of years ago) where top business leaders identify environmental challenges as the key strategic threats to their businesses. Does your Dean really think they know more about corporate strategy than them.

     

    You might also ask them why they think Enron went bust, General Motors is a dead corp walking and why Lehman Brothers doesn't exist anymore - the simple answer being that their business models/strategies were ultimately not sustainable - economically, socially and/or environmentally (law breaking, excessive risk taking and inappropriate product range decisions being the symptoms rather than the disease).

     

    The logic of sustainability is the logic of strategy - developing a set of resources and stakeholder relationships that can allow the business to survive and thrive in the (very) long-term (which in the full sustainability context means existing within a society and economy that can also survive and thrive because we learn to avoid the collective over-exploitation of ecological resources and other people. Whether we can get there onboard a spaceship crewed by 6.6 Billion and rising is a different question for a different course I'd suggest).

     

    Sounds like your Dean (a) Doesn't know about/understand strategy, and is confusing the big issues and questions that business now face with companies seeking to use sustainability credentials to generate short-term competitive advantage or shine their corporate image - possibly through a bit of greenwashing - which you could argue reflects superficial tactics rather than core strategy and (b) has employed what I identified back in 1994 as Academic BATNEEC syndrome - Best Available Teaching Not Entailing Excessive Change  (although not sure the embedded nearly-joke there translates outside the UK) - ie Why bother to actually change a course we've been teaching pretty much the same way for the last 25 years, when you can get a guest lecturer to come in and talk about sustainability issues in lecture 20 out of 20 weeks ?

     

    I tried to put the strategy and sustainability arguments in a reasonably neat nutshell in Chapter 25 of the Sage Handbook of 21st Century Management that Charles edited - it was entitled Toward Sustainable Organizations for the 21st Century.

     

    Alternatively - you could suggest settling it through a contest. Get a grad student or similar to go through the annual reports for the top 30 US companies and tally up every statement indicating that sustainability issues are of strategic importance, and every statement indicating that they are only a tactical concern and see who wins !

     

    On a slightly different topic - and back to what should and shouldn't be posted on the ONE List-serve. The experience of climate scientists in the UK suggests that things you email can come back to haunt you. If using the word 'trick' to describe a statistical technique (hands up all those who've never done that !) in a private email can lead to you being publicly branded a fraudulent scholar and member of a global conspiracy for bad global climate science - then one day, when you're trying to influence something for the good, is there a risk that an ironic posting turns into 'Pro-sustainability academic (or academic organisation) 's secret shameful past promoting global genocide' becomes the media headline ? It might sound far-fetched - but the experience of some scholars here is that years of dedicated scholarship can be pretty nastily tainted in the media by the fall-out from a casually worded private email amongst colleagues. The principle of free speech within academic debate is important - but it might come with an expensive price-tag if further down the road people with an axe to grind seek to discredit you and your whole field of research because you chose to play devil's advocate or attempted irony via a keyboard (always tricky).

     

    Just a thought ......

     

    Best wishes to all.

     

    Ken.

     

    Professor Ken Peattie,

    Director, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Cardiff University,

    55 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

    02920 876562

    website: www.brass.cf.ac.uk

     

     

     

     


     

    -----Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> wrote: -----

    From: Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM>
    Sent by: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
    Date: 02/23/2010 05:52PM
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail

     




    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail




    --
    Ann E. Echols, Ed.D., Ph.D.
    Research Associate/Instructional Consultant
    Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE)
    The Pennsylvania State University
    305D Rider Building
    University Park, PA 16801-4819
    office phone: 814-863-2598
    E-mail: aie1@psu.edu
    http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu
    http://assess.psu.edu


  • 9.  "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

    Posted 02-24-2010 11:58

    Hi all

    Definitely, I'm with you! In a research I conducted with business leaders championing sustainability initiatives, their advice was to bring in the sustainability and ethical perspective into every course taught!

     

    Isabel Rimanoczy

     

     

    From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Ann E. Echols
    Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 9:51 AM
    To: ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    Hi Joe and all:

    So, I am curious - to me sustainability represents a Paradigm shift (e.g., Thomas Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) and as such represents a lifestyle change. Shades of green, so to speak, are intermediary steps to a holistic way of living/working/doing business different from how we operate today, with greater sensitivity and stewardship of the natural environment; people, place, flora, and fauna. If it is a paradigm shift, think of all the business cases we all have taught (The Swiss Watch Industry and Swatch as one main example) that told us if we didn't get on board, we'd die and not even know why till after the fact... If anyone should be understanding of and amenable to change, it should be us - the leaders of thought and intellectuals of society who create the direction of this change via research and manage it through education. It all just makes me wonder. Maybe I have just been reading too many of Jane Goodall's books lately, and am naively passionate, but I believe that sustainability concepts should be interwoven throughout as much of our b-curriculum as possible and not tacked on as "additional chapters that tell us about the what's coming next." I really don't see this one going away.
     
    With Kind Regards,
    Ann

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Joseph Sarkis <jsarkis@clarku.edu> wrote:

    Bruce,

     

    I agree with you that the responses you have received to this query were on target, sustainability as a 'tactic' is not appropriate or accurate.  But, one there is still the other comment from your Dean that probably needs addressing and discussion "why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course".   

     

    I think the Dean's concern in this case may be related to a keeping balance with other management topics in a capstone course.  We as ONE'rs would probably like to see more sustainability integrated into the capstone course.  But others might feel it is one of many possible strategies an organization can follow and not necessarily be the core element of the capstone.   I am not sure if there are AACSB accreditation requirements related to capstones and what should be included in them. The Dean might be under the impression that one topic should not subsume all the other topics for managing an organization.  Also, this might be the Dean's course because it is meant to cover all the disciplines within a school of business. 

     

    So basically an alternative question (rather than sustainability being tactical or strategic, which is clear to most of us) is: How much sustainability should be included in a capstone course? 

     

    -Joe

     

     

     

    From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Clemens
    Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:59 AM

    Subject: Re: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    Greetings all,

    I can't say how impressed I was with your responses to my query.  Indeed it is a reaffirmation of the type of members we have in ONE.  We have probably each faced this issue in different contexts.  I imagine those of you teaching OB have also considered how to incorporate sustainability into your curricula.  I happen to be a strategy type, so my Dean was questioning why we need to spend so much time addressing sustainability in a capstone course.  Lorton, Lionel, Ann, Nancy, Scott and Marshall all added substantively to the thread.  I was also impressed at the level of cooperation and the interrelated thread that each of you wove.  Don't you love to hear that in our classes?  For me, the quintessential example of positive class participation is a comment such as  – "Building upon Marcy's point that .... and Ben's argument that ....  I'd offer...."

    I also offer that this would make a great paper: how to integrate sustainability in the entire b-school (if not university-wide) curriculum.  The AASHE hosts "Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshops" - http://www.aashe.org/profdev/curriculum.php.  I participated in one last summer and I am planning to host a similar workshop on our campus later this spring.  I highly recommend attending one of the AASHE workshops, especially if you can find another one in AnaheimJ...   

    Kudos to Charles for making these discussions possible and for all of you for participating.  I will keep you informed of my negotiations with my Dean.

    Best regards,

    Bruce 

     

    On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Ken Peattie <Peattie@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:

    Dear Bruce,

     

    Oh Yes, I remember that question from the interview for Chair I had years ago.

     

    Try asking your Dean why they think companies engage in strategy at all. The answer is that companies do long-term orientated things like build relationships with customers and other stakeholders, gather information about external trends and try to decide what the future might hold, invest in training and developing their human resources etc etc for one key purpose - to try and stay in business tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. If the purposes of business really was to maximise short-term profit you would just screw all the customers for every penny, default on every debt and exploit then summarily dismiss your staff. Business engages in strategy on the Confuscian logic that 'He who does not consider what is far off, will find trouble close at hand' - there are major surveys (McKinsey did one a couple of years ago) where top business leaders identify environmental challenges as the key strategic threats to their businesses. Does your Dean really think they know more about corporate strategy than them.

     

    You might also ask them why they think Enron went bust, General Motors is a dead corp walking and why Lehman Brothers doesn't exist anymore - the simple answer being that their business models/strategies were ultimately not sustainable - economically, socially and/or environmentally (law breaking, excessive risk taking and inappropriate product range decisions being the symptoms rather than the disease).

     

    The logic of sustainability is the logic of strategy - developing a set of resources and stakeholder relationships that can allow the business to survive and thrive in the (very) long-term (which in the full sustainability context means existing within a society and economy that can also survive and thrive because we learn to avoid the collective over-exploitation of ecological resources and other people. Whether we can get there onboard a spaceship crewed by 6.6 Billion and rising is a different question for a different course I'd suggest).

     

    Sounds like your Dean (a) Doesn't know about/understand strategy, and is confusing the big issues and questions that business now face with companies seeking to use sustainability credentials to generate short-term competitive advantage or shine their corporate image - possibly through a bit of greenwashing - which you could argue reflects superficial tactics rather than core strategy and (b) has employed what I identified back in 1994 as Academic BATNEEC syndrome - Best Available Teaching Not Entailing Excessive Change  (although not sure the embedded nearly-joke there translates outside the UK) - ie Why bother to actually change a course we've been teaching pretty much the same way for the last 25 years, when you can get a guest lecturer to come in and talk about sustainability issues in lecture 20 out of 20 weeks ?

     

    I tried to put the strategy and sustainability arguments in a reasonably neat nutshell in Chapter 25 of the Sage Handbook of 21st Century Management that Charles edited - it was entitled Toward Sustainable Organizations for the 21st Century.

     

    Alternatively - you could suggest settling it through a contest. Get a grad student or similar to go through the annual reports for the top 30 US companies and tally up every statement indicating that sustainability issues are of strategic importance, and every statement indicating that they are only a tactical concern and see who wins !

     

    On a slightly different topic - and back to what should and shouldn't be posted on the ONE List-serve. The experience of climate scientists in the UK suggests that things you email can come back to haunt you. If using the word 'trick' to describe a statistical technique (hands up all those who've never done that !) in a private email can lead to you being publicly branded a fraudulent scholar and member of a global conspiracy for bad global climate science - then one day, when you're trying to influence something for the good, is there a risk that an ironic posting turns into 'Pro-sustainability academic (or academic organisation) 's secret shameful past promoting global genocide' becomes the media headline ? It might sound far-fetched - but the experience of some scholars here is that years of dedicated scholarship can be pretty nastily tainted in the media by the fall-out from a casually worded private email amongst colleagues. The principle of free speech within academic debate is important - but it might come with an expensive price-tag if further down the road people with an axe to grind seek to discredit you and your whole field of research because you chose to play devil's advocate or attempted irony via a keyboard (always tricky).

     

    Just a thought ......

     

    Best wishes to all.

     

    Ken.

     

    Professor Ken Peattie,

    Director, ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Cardiff University,

    55 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

    02920 876562

    website: www.brass.cf.ac.uk

     

     

     

     


     

    -----Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> wrote: -----

    From: Bruce Clemens <bruce.wayne.clemens@GMAIL.COM>
    Sent by: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion <ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU>
    Date: 02/23/2010 05:52PM
    Subject: "sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy"

     

    I'm trying to make the case with my dean that sustainability should be taught in all strategy courses.  My Dean offers that sustainability is more a tactic than a strategy.  I'd appreciate any help, especially citations.  Thanks...

     Bruce


    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail

     




    --
    Bruce Clemens PhD PE
    Management Department
    School of Business
    109 Churchill Hall
    Western New England College
    1215 Wilbraham Road
    Springfield MA 01119
    Phone: 413-782-1500
    Fax: 413-796-2068
    bclemens@wnec.edu
    Campus mailbox number: C5433

    Please consider your environmental responsibilities before printing this e-mail




    --
    Ann E. Echols, Ed.D., Ph.D.
    Research Associate/Instructional Consultant
    Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE)
    The Pennsylvania State University
    305D Rider Building
    University Park, PA 16801-4819
    office phone: 814-863-2598
    E-mail: aie1@psu.edu
    http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu
    http://assess.psu.edu

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