Hi Ilaria

I have attached a list of papers from my research collection on business continuity, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, ethics, manufacturing, resilience, stewardship, and sustainability. There is a shift in corporate governance away from the traditional agency theory based approach to a more stewardship theory based approach, with greater emphasis being placed on sustainability, corporate social resonsibility, resilience, ethical behaviour, business continuity management. I don't know if the manufacturing references will be exactly what you are looking for, but you might as well have them.

You might want to check out the natural resource managment sectors, as they have been pretty much at the forefront of developing their businesses along sustainable lines, very much taking a stewardship view on everything they do. Have a read through these two books to get a good idea of their thinking:

[1] R. W. Y. Kao, Stewardship Based Economics. World Scientific, 2007.

[2] F. S. Chapin, G. P. Kofinas, and C. Folke, Principles of ecosystem stewardship: Resilience-based natural resource management in a changing world. Springer, 2009.

In the UK, corporate goernance rules have evolved considerably during the past decades, with a noticeable shift towards stewardship happening 5 years ago.

I hope this will help you find something useful.

Regards

Bob

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Hi Kenneth

The first thing I would say, is that you need to understand the motivation of company managers. Are they seeking to "tick the box" to show they have addressed the sustainability question, or are they actually serious about it? For those managers who fall into the first group, the majority will be paying lip service to the idea so that they can be seen to have done something. They won't necessarily care whether they do it for environmental or economic reasons, just as long as they can tick the box in their Annual Report. The serious ones are a completely different case. To some extent, their motivation will depend on the market sector they operate in which, in turn, could be influenced by government attitude, regional pressures or possible activist noise.

Back in their 2007 Annual Report, the Royal Bank of Scotland CEO boasted about his stewardship credentials, and how well prepared the company was for long term success. Yet, within 10 months, his "stewardship" approach had steered the company into complete financial meltdown, requiring a £46 Billion bail-out. In the near decade since, the company has incurred greater losses than all the bail out cash put in by the government. A rather catastrophic lesson in the hubris associated with "box ticking" and boasting of "excellent stewardship"..

The primary goal of management of a company is to maximise the capital of that company for the benefit of shareholders. Under agency theory, many managers ended up taking decisions that would be of greater benefit to themselves than the shareholders, focussing on short term gain, at the expense of long term sustainability. The stewardship approach is intended to move company managers away from this "self-interest" approach. Of course, large investment funds and hedge fund managers are often complicit in encouraging this short term decision making, putting short term profits ahead of long term sustainable decisions. This is starting to change for the better, cartainly in the area of corporate governance.

However, for those who are really serious about sustainability, there will not be a firm "bulls-eye" to aim for, Managers need to find a balance to satisfy the challenges they face, while delivering a sufficient level of satisfaction for the multiple requirements they need to meet. Thus for some, they will have more focus on the environmental impact, where others might have a greater focus on the economic impact, others still might wish to ensure minimal trouble from the activists. There is unlikely to be a "one size fits all" approach that will keep everyone happy.

Generally, the whole process can be complicated by the input from the "box tickers", since their approach will influence what others do to some extent, but the adverse impact would not be felt until some catastrophic event is triggered by this less than committed approach.

To this, the managers must also consider the economics of the environmental approach. Some environmental approaches require a disproportionate amount of resources to be expended, thus turning an environmentally sound idea into an eneconomic one. No shareholder will countenance this approach in any long term way.

Another factor that can play into this is the approach of government and regional authorities. Subsidies and tax breaks can help soften the blow to encourage companies to behave in a more sustainable way, and can have some impact on their approach.

At the end of the day, there are a lot of variables, different agendas and other factors which must all be taken into account in order to keep everyone happy. There is no perfect solution to all interests. Rather there needs to be some form of compromise leading to the best balance that can be achieved in the particular circumstances any company faces. Which means there is no easy answer to your question of where should the "bulls-eye" be positioned? But it is certainly good that more and more people are starting to think much more seriously about it.

Regards

Bob

Having done a study about nine of the world’s most sustainable companies Wirtenberg, Harmon, Russell, and Fairfield, 2007 as in AMA, 2007) identified seven core qualities associated with successfully implementing sustainability strategies and achieving triple bottom line results. These seven core qualities of a sustainable enterprise are top management support, centrality to business strategy, values, metrics, stakeholder engagement, systems alignment, and organizational integration. Relevant reference is:

_______(2007),CREATING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: A Global Study of Current Trends and Possibilities, American Management Association, Retrieved 18 July 2016.

http://view2.fdu.edu/legacy/amawebcastreport.pdf

Best wishes!

In my views sustainability is:

(i) Decreasing the draw of resources from mother earth.

(ii) Elongating the life of the organisation (or the actors) by improving upon business processes, and capability,, financially self suntanning profiteering, while maintaining the focus on customers as should be necessary, and always learning to improve environmental performance.

the idea is therefor being LEAN, MEAN and GREEN; by deploying techno-environmental perspectives,

As I perceive a technological perspective rests upon the development of Economically viable solutions, and nothing could be better viable, than the LEAN, MEAN and GREEN approach.

  Thareja P, 2009,  ‘A Total Quality Organization Thro’ People’, (Part 21) Lean People, Mean People, Green People, FOUNDRY, An Indian Journal For Progressive Metal Casters, Vol XXI, No 3, issue 123, May/June  2009 , pp 41-48

https://ssrn.com/abstract=1633896

Yes,  Kenneth,

I too feel very strongly.

To quote..

Banish Nature-unfriendly Acts

My Target was to limit 5 words in each line, a line of 2 sentences of two words and three words each.Hope it woorks. This is an Experiment in its own right in Poetry

Lavish acts allure! Notoriety matures!

Concerns get sore! Austerity bores!

Why unsanitary conditions reign more?

Beauty gets scoured! Deepening furor!

Deep to Core! Toxicity galore!

Still! People continue muddling more!

In spite of uproar! Rogues endure!

Niggardly levels impure! Mounting score!

Man! Why contaminate Nature more?

Mulch to Manure! Bacteria devour!

Bias of folklore! Regenerated décor!

Folks! Cleanliness you deserve more!

Purity adores! Filtering through pores!

Pollutants make roar! Safety obscure!

Banish! these people polluting more!

(c)Copyright 2003 Priyavrat Thareja

Kenneth.. I too crib as you do.

My alignment towards environment happened at the adolescent age .. may be 9 to 14 years, as my grand pa would interact with regard to any of my misdoings regarding sustainability. and he was a rolemodel (he were.. he was an institution in himself).

Thus producing something like above is no wonder.

i am an environmental auditor, versed with life cycle thinking, a lean enthusiast and a lean six sigma black belt.That should explain.

Hi, iLaria:

There is a widespread confusion in practice as to which indicators to choose from the vast universe of sustainability indicators that not only transparently reflect performance but also represent the most widely used sustainability guidelines!

A recent research study ( Rahdari, & Rostamy, 2015) attempted to address one specific question. What are the most common indicators of sustainability at the corporate level? To do so, it examines corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability normative frameworks, management systems, guidelines, and rating systems using a comprehensive four-pronged approach to find the most common indicators for the assessment of environmental, social and governance aspects of business performance. The study attempted to transcend the current literature on sustainability indicators by providing a general set of the most common indicators that are clustered into a hierarchical normative framework. Moreover, this general set of most common indicators provides a guidance for the implementation of indicator systems in companies and enables them to assess their sustainability performance, which in turn will help the business sustainable development agenda.

The results of the study showed that environmental indicators account for almost half of the extracted most common indicators. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the most common indicators of sustainability at the corporate level and their utility to companies and stakeholders. This work extends, updates and complements previous efforts to find the most common indicators of sustainability. It also provides the building blocks for future studies that could explore the usefulness of these indicators to companies and stakeholders in various contexts!

• Rahdari, A. H., & Anvary Rostamy, A. A. (2015). Designing a general set of sustainability indicators at the corporate level. Journal Of Cleaner Production, 108757-771.

Hope this helps!

Kind Regards, Nadeem

In run-of-the-mill organizations—that is, in the majority of cases, it might be something of a stretch to identify specific organizational cultures and systems of governance that allow sustainability to "thrive within". This said, there may be something to be said for sustainability reporting: the first environmental reports were published in the late 1980s by companies in the chemical industry (that had image problems); another group of early reporters comprised committed small- and medium-sized businesses with comparatively "advanced" environmental management systems. Many large organizations now produce annual sustainability reports from a wide array of ratings and standards, including those the Global Reporting Initiative promotes. Examples of sustainability reports are at https://www.adb.org/documents/series/adb-sustainability-reports. Cynics will, rightly, have their say. Ultimately, we must do more and better with less, which has deep (and to many unpalatable) implications for sustainable consumption and production.

Hi Kenneth

To answer your second question, I have had the benefit of working for several decades in industry before moving into academia, so do have a little understanding of what makes corporate executives tick.

As I said earlier, the primary goal of management should be to maximise shareholder returns. Often, management rewards are conditional on achieving this goal, and thanks to the attitude of large hedge funds, there is often a greater focus on short term gains, at the expense of long term decisions.

If we take the view that sustainability can be concerned both with economic goals as well as environmental goals, it is clear that all decisions will need to be tempered with a view to the long term viability of the business. There is little point in management taking environmentally sound decisions, where disproportionate sums of money must be spent, since at sufficient volume, this could compromise the economic sustainability of the company. If the company is unable to survive economically in the long run, then achieving environmental goals becomes moot. Considering also that if the company does not survive, there is no job for the management, and where managers have been seen to drive a company into liquidation because of an over-zealous approach to environmental concerns, there will probably be no future employment for them either.

There is no reason why companies might not try to do environmentally sustainable work in a more economically efficient way, but there is no doubt that the economic argument will trump the environmental argument in most cases.

So, to sum up based on my own working experience, economically sustainable decisions can be seen as vital for the economic sustainability of the company, whereas environmentally sustainable decisions can be seen as desirable for society, but these must be made within the constraints of economic viability, otherwise, these decisions will be less likely to be taken.

I hope that helps.

Regards

Bob

Dear all,

thanks for the compelling contributions.

I agree of course that environmentally sustainable initiatives and programs are feasible if economically viable. 

My question actually looked at a more subtle situation, which probably I failed to convey: what are the conditions/factors that make people in a company consistently think, for instance:

• in the long term rather in the short term?
• of the resources, tangible and intangible, that they use and the possibility to keep on using them in the future at the same rate?
• of investing in innovation? (consequence of posing the previous question)

It can be that there are people that see the viability of certain programs or strategies but struggle to create a convincing case for them to be implemented when these people work in a company that does not support a certain culture/thinking. This kind of culture looks at what our future will be as a company and as a society in 50 and 100 years. 

However, I found pieces of answers that fed my curiosity in this sense, so thanks again for your contributions.

If you all have further points that tailor the aspects I listed above, please share them!