A month ago, Stanford Business School announced that it would begin a new program dealing with sustainability and corporate responsibility. This new initiative, called the “Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability Executive Program” will consist of 5-day workshop to be offered in the fall at the Stanford Sierra conference center, located on Lake Tahoe (perhaps to inspire some appreciation for natural resources?). The workshop is targeted at senior executives of private, public and non-profit organizations [GSB].
Faculty director William Barnett had this to say about the motivation behind the program:
Today, environmental sustainability has become an objective both in our public policies and our business strategies. Consequently, best practice in environmental sustainability needs to be understood by business executives, environmental activists, public administrators, and regulators alike. The goal of our program is to bring together executives from each of these worlds, to expose them to state-of-the-art knowledge on environmental sustainability in business, and to facilitate their learning from one another. The program aims to be a watershed event in each participant’s career, accelerating the development of those who will shape tomorrow’s sustainable business and public policies [GSB].
[1] Stanford Sierra conference center, [2] William Barnett
On the agenda for the workshop are sessions dealing with avoiding greenwashing to “understand how environmental strategies can be both pragmatic and authentic,” how to incorporate environmental sustainability into the supply chain, and even how to manage the pressures of high-profile activism [GSB].
It is extremely encouraging to see a program such as this being targeted at executives and those with the power to make decisions with a significant impact. The curriculum seems to discuss these matters in a meaningful way and try to get participants to really think about sustainability as an integral part of their business strategy. Throughout the quarter, we have been discussing how sustainability can also make good business sense – in our final presentation on office paper usage, our group showed a case study of how much money (and resources) Citigroup managed to save by switching to duplexing printers. However, many of the people who are running things now were just never taught to see the decisions they make in this light. As Amory Lovins discussed in his lecture, in business schools it is taught to look at the part costs, rather than the costs of an integrated system over time. Hopefully this seminar will be a step in the right direction for the executives who attend. But the success and impact of the program also depends on who decides to attend. Hopefully sustainability has at least made it onto the radar enough for larger corporations to have heard about a program like this and for them to be willing spare some of their key decision-makers for five days.
Sources:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/bses/
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/04/30/daily22.html?from_rss=1
June 14, 2007 at 12:17 am |
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