Here is another part of my academic career. This paper was for my "organizational change for sustainability" class. I am only posting the Intro, the first part of my paper and my personal notes, because the main part is only a summary of the book: Organizational Change for Corporate Sustainability: A Guide for Leaders and Change Agents of the Future, by Dexter Dunphy, Andrew Griffiths, Suzanne Benn (
http://www.amazon.com/Organizational-Change-Corporate-Sustainability-Understanding/dp/0415393299/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329237665&sr=8-2)
have fun reading :)
Introduction:
Sustainability has become one of the biggest trends
worldwide over the last 30 years. Waking up to the reality of our problems a
lot of people demand “more sustainability” from corporations, government and
society as a whole. Many corporations jumped on this train and started to look
at how they could change and adapt their business practices to be more
sustainable in their actions.
The Holy Grail, similar to sustainability now, plays a
different role everywhere it appears. In most versions of the legend the hero
must prove himself worthy to be in its presence. In the early tales, Percival's
immaturity prevents him from fulfilling his destiny when he first encounters
the Grail, and he must grow spiritually and mentally before he can locate it
again. In a later telling the Grail is a symbol of God's grace, available to
all but only fully realized by those who prepare themselves spiritually, like
the saintly Galahad.
The Sustainability Phase Model
In their introduction, Dunphy, Griffiths and Benn pose the
question of whether corporations are evil. They argue that it would be
simplistic and naïve to portray corporations as evil by nature, but that it is
important to “exercise collective control over the way in which they operate”.
Thus it is important to define their role within society, their social and
environmental responsibility, and their accountability. They think that “the
core of this debate can be summarized as the argument about whether the role of
the corporation is simply to create financial wealth for its owners, or to
contribute to the well-being of a wider range of stakeholders, including the
community, the environment and future generations.”
(p. 7, 8)
The Authors present a phase model to make comparisons
between organizations and their commitment and practice towards sustainability.
The model also describes a set of steps that organizations take in progressing
to sustainability.
These steps are:
·
Rejection
·
Non-responsiveness
·
Compliance
·
Efficiency
·
Strategic proactivity
·
The sustaining corporation
All phases are described in terms of their attitudes towards
human sustainability and ecological sustainability. This gives the reader an
idea of the journey an organization theoretically goes through, on its way to
more sustainable practice.
Figure 1: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/0430230105001.png
1.
Rejection
Employees and subcontractors are regarded as a resource that can be exploited
and the environment is regarded as a free good to be exploited. Pro
environmental action is seen as a threat to the organization.
2.
Non-Responsiveness
Financial and technological factors dominate business strategies to the
exclusion of most human resource management. The ecological environment is not
considered to be a relevant factor in strategic or operational decisions.
Environmental risks, costs, opportunities and imperatives are seen as
irrelevant or are not perceived at all.
3.
Compliance
The emphasis is on compliance with legal requirements in industrial relations,
safety, workplace standards, and so on. Financial and technological factors
dominate business strategies, but the company seeks to comply with environmental
laws to minimize the firm’ potential liabilities from actions that have adverse
impact on the environment.
4.
Efficiency
There is a systematic attempt to integrate human resource functions into a
coherent HR system to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Poor environmental
practice is seen as an important source of avoidable costs.
5.
Strategic
Proactivity
Skill mix and diversity are seen as integral and vitally important aspects
for the business, and intellectual and social capital are used to develop
strategic advantage through innovation. Proactive environmental strategies
supporting ecological sustainability are seen as strategic business
opportunities to provide competitive advantage. The organization seeks
competitive leadership through spearheading environmentally friendly products
and processes.
6.
The
sustaining corporation
The organization accepts responsibility for contributing to the process of
renewing and upgrading human knowledge and skill formation in the community and
society as a whole and is a strong promoter of equal opportunity, workplace
diversity and work-life balance as workplace principles. The organization
becomes an active promoter of ecological sustainability values and seeks to
influence key participants in the industry and society in general. Nature is
valued for its own sake.
(p. 24-26)
.....
Personal Note
Writing this paper was extremely hard for me, for reasons
that I cannot really explain. There is some kind of inner blockage that is
hindering me to accept the reality the authors are creating. Even though their
model seems to be logical and they obviously have enough experience to showcase
their points, there is still something wrong for me. Something on an intuitive
level is telling me that this is not working. Even though I am aware that this
book is geared towards a specific market of corporate CEOs and change agents,
and I fully recognize the good intentions behind it, I strongly believe that it
is not going far enough.
It seems to me that their belief that the system can be
changed in an incremental way, which is what their model seems to describe,
does not work. It seems that the fundamental beliefs that build their logic
will not hold up. Their model still lies
on the assumption of infinite growth, a basic and fundamental problem within
the capitalist system. There is no such thing as infinite growth, and therefore
every competitive system that is based on this assumption, whether it is
integrating sustainability or not, is doomed to fail in the long term.
The second logical flaw is the assumption that at the heart
of every business lays profit. The idea of profit has created a mousetrap in
which our current system is trapping itself. By looking for profits, we forget
to see what the original purpose of business is. The creation of value for the
greater good is the real, original purpose for business. Looking back thousands
of years, groups gathered together to create things of value that could not be
created by one person alone, to generate more value for the greater good of
everyone. If this seems altruistic, or unrealistic to you, imagine living in a
tribe in the jungle, and creating a field to grow crops so that everyone in the
tribe could eat and prosper. Now imagine the whole world being this tribe.
It might seem like a good idea to try and change the system.
It might seem like its worth the time and energy to look at the existing model
and see where you can change it, tweak it and adapt it. If you take a step back
though, you will see that this system has brought itself to a point where
little changes, and lofty visions are not enough anymore. The incremental path
of change is over. This system needs drastic change, and that is what is
missing in their book: The boldness to propose changes that are outside of what
exists right now. In the words of Buckminster Fuller: "You never change
things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new
model that makes the existing model obsolete."
We are at a point where we need a new model, one that is not
based on the assumptions of infinite growth, exploitation of the environment
and the generation of profit as the central motivation. A model that takes into
account the inherent drive of humans for good, that acknowledges that we are
all in this together, and that the biggest goals are to create a world worth
living for everyone on this planet. This certainly is not going to happen by
slowly transforming corporations into sustainable corporations, because the
only thing they “sustain” is their inherent need for profit and exploitation.
It seems to me like we are in a very similar situation as it
was in France at the time of the French revolution, where it was not enough to
change and adopt the system. A new system needed to be created, to replace the
old one. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries
collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation
as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a
sustained assault from radical political groups, masses on the streets,
and peasants in the countryside. Old ideas about tradition and hierarchy – of monarchy, aristocracy and religious
authority - were abruptly overthrown by
new Enlightenment principles of equality, citizenship and
inalienable rights. This process went on for the next 50 years, going back and
forth in a power struggle between democracy and monarchy, but finally ended in
the establishment of the first modern democracy in Europe. Even thought this
process caused a lot of pain, suffering and death, it liberated the world and
caused the next level of evolution for mankind.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution)
I believe that we are at a very similar point of time. This
society needs to reinvent itself and completely transform into something new;
shed the old skin of corporate capitalism and be reborn in a new form. We can see now the initiation of this shift,
with economists predicting the break down of our current model, people
demonstrating on streets and public spaces all over the world and scholars
creating new models of existence. I don’t know how this model is going to look,
but if we are to survive, it has to be radically different from what we
currently have. The ideas range from global non-monetary, resource based
economies to small community self-sufficiency, to spiritual enlightenment
theories. It seems that, like Perceval, the corporate world, in its quest to
find the holy grail of profit and sustainability, does not dare to ask the
right question, and therefore is doomed to fail.
