N8 Science Events. July 2010. Published 30.6.10 at 3.30.
Key elements of a green Business agenda
Helen Gavaghan, Leeds
Report of a one day meeting about sustainable business development, at Leeds University Business School (LUBS) on 8th June, 2010.
The keynote event of the conference - Making Business Sense of Sustainability (8th June) - was Mark Orpin from ASDA, speaking about the supermarket's
approach to a green agenda. ASDA is owned by Wal-Mart, a company which if it sneezes could give the world a financial cold. It is obscenely large, said Mr Orpin, telling
his audience of MBA students, newly minted MBAs and business leaders that if Wal-Mart were a country its GDP would fall between that of Pakistan and Columbia.
Mr Orpin's talk
showed that by "obscenely large" he was not speaking as an anti-globalisation activist at a G20 meeting might. The next fives years are crucial for ASDA, he said, saying ASDA was looking
for growth and strategic alliances, in particular with utility companies. We were "murdered" in 2008 by a 40 per cent hike in our fuel bill, he said. His view being that the only
sensible option was to use less fuel.
Mr Orpin has a background in transfer pricing as an accountant in the oil industry, and he told LUBS a story of a faltering start in
ASDA's sustainability agenda. More than once he said he was unsure what sustainability meant but that he knew it was a concept here to stay. Applications to Councils needed to show
serious attention to an agenda of environmental sustainability if they are to be competitive and win the right to operate supermarkets, he said. And his repeat message was that ASDA
is competing. The company, for example, want to buy Netto and when he spoke the potential deal before the Competition Commissioner.
Meeting Council requirements for a green
agenda is in line with a strategy set in 2005 for Wal-Mart by the retail giant's then chief, Lee Scott. Mr Orpin interspersed his talk with references to one made five years earlier
by Mr Scott, giving me his own well worked and highlighted print of Lee Scott's talk when he had finished speaking to LUBS.
Earlier in the day Simon Pringle, the founding
director of management consultancy Mason Hardy and Alex Sobel, general manager of Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humberside gave excellent overviews of general devlopments in
the sustainability agenda.
A focus on compliance can lead to complacency, said Mr Pringle. Leading to the attitude of why do what you don't have to do. So good sustainable
development has now moved beyond compliance to operations and a lot of benchmarking. "One could argue that the best corporate responsibility report is one that does not exist because
it is part of the corporation's ethos.
"In the past two to three years we have moved to a communication led model, seeking to build new relationships with customers. But
superficial communications can erode trust, and marketing led messages are not necessarily good."
Pringle argued that for many corporations the sustainability agenda is
not a threat but an opportunity. And in a well run business, he said, people understand the aims. "People," he said, "like being engaged in sustainability, leadership and giving
something back."
Alex Sobel, general manager of Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humberside, spoke of the comparatively new corporate structures of social enterprises. Their
defining characteristic, he said, is trading and entrepreneurial activity, giving community and social benefits with social ownership and defined, limited profit.
He gave a variety of examples, such as a social enterprise running a low, carbon economy and introducing school children to where milk comes from. Or, he said, one could have
development trusts which revive a particular community through development. There can also be co-operatives, worker or customer owned.
Mr Sobel outlined five routes to
social ownership:
social entrepreneurs;
public sector spin-offs;
private sector conversions;
co-ops; and
charity or voluntary sector conversions
During Q and A Mr Sobel made clear that social enterprises are not receiving hand outs but are competing in the market place like anyone else.
Running as a thread through all presentations and discussions was the question of how to intergrate a green agenda into corporate strategies. All were conscious of the need
to avoid green washing -- disingenuously spinning products as environmentally friendly.
And one of the easiest messages to understand came from Ph.D geologist, Dr
Sarah Mckay of WSP. "My five year olds knows that if you turn off the light you save the polar bear," she said.
MasonHardy can be found at: http://www.masonhardy.com/
and Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humberside at http://www.seyh.org.uk/about-seyh |
S.E.O. applied by Helen Gavaghan from 5th July, 2012. I have made no alterations to the words
in the article since publication at the time stated above. I have sent print copies of what appears on the screen immediately after publication, and, as a
, to a number of people I have quoted in stories on this website.