Making short-term conveniences involving sustainability can erode the ethical standing of your organisation, its employee’s commitment, and motivation, and damage the organisation’s overall performance and innovation.
There is growing evidence that unsustainable business models are causing increasing disruption within global sectors. (1). Many institutional business leaders and owners, either through ignorance or an inability to change, remain committed to the pursuit of unsustainable business models, behaviours and even ethics.
The simple question is why?
To date action initiated by businesses towards progress against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been disappointing. Although some companies have sought to make considerable changes the majority have remained effectively in a ‘business as normal’ mindset, often relying on initiatives impacting on less than 5% of their asset base to demonstrate their compliance and badge waving. Despite the recognised dangers few have fully committed to a sustainable future.
The unsustainable business model pathways repeatedly followed by organisations, repeatedly fall into a group of nine unsustainable practices. These are:
In talking with and coaching business leaders I am repeatedly amazed by their acknowledgement that their social norms and ethics at work can knowingly be significantly different from the behaviours and culture they wish for in their own communities, churches, and family life.
If you are embarrassed to drop your coffee cup in the street of your local town, why are you willing to pollute the atmosphere or river of that town unnecessarily?
Can you explain crossing behavioural thresholds around the board table that would be frowned upon around the family table?
These questions become even more puzzling when business leaders ask their employees to cross similar ethical thresholds, undertake actions that all know to be wrong, or threaten retribution if their demands are not followed
Twenty years ago, most business leaders had a scant understanding of sustainability issues impacting business, today it is a brave executive who states he has no understanding of climate change, materiality, or supply chain impacts. Most organisations have a clear organisational picture of sustainability and can possess direct experience of the pro-environmental or corporate social responsibility activities in practice within their market sectors. Recent years have beheld a significant growth in media coverage and sector press articles of sustainable ways of working, thinking, and behaving through the expansion of Environmental management (EMS), environmental impact (ESIA) and environmental and social governance (ESG) systems. Accordingly, businesses and the societies they service increasingly have developed an understanding and awareness of pro-environmental and social behaviours.
Yet, despite this awareness globally carbon emissions are still rising, and climate change is occurring at an anticipated rate; agricultural and forest degradation continues; massive numbers of species are at risk of extinction; there is growing food insecurity and poverty, and unsustainable consumption and production patterns remain pervasive (3). The evidence suggests that despite increasing awareness, the most business has yet to take the issue seriously, adapt their ongoing business approaches and make the required transformations towards more environmentally, social, and sustainable practices in their operations.
In a global survey of over 13,000 employees across a wide range of sectors, 22% responded feeling under pressure to compromise ethical standards at work. (2) In other recent research, such pressure is often associated with being specifically asked to engage in behaviour that is unethical or morally questionable. Other examples of ethical and unsustainable practices include a communication company that declined to repair the phones of elderly customers, and transportation engineers being asked to approve projects that were believed to be at risk for structural failure.
In a personal example, I was approached for help by a sustainability officer who was continually asked by his employers to downgrade company impact assessments for new oil palm plantations and to identify areas of virgin forest suitable for plantation conversion. My advice in the last case was to consider his professional ethics and to change jobs!
While senior leaders and their executive teams may make unsustainable decisions or make unethical requests on their employees to enhance short-term results, gain personal rewards or retain their positions of corporate power. The results often lack a sense of leadership and often run the risk of negatively impacting the business, via their employees’ motivation and task performance in the long term.
Employees in businesses who receive unethical requests, or who are aware of unsustainable practices have a lower sense of loyalty, job satisfaction and alignment with the business.
Would you feel guilt or regret if asked to partake in an action you knew involved the use of an increasingly unsustainable supply chain unnecessarily reliant on bribery and worker exploitation?
Most business leaders have an inherent desire to view themselves as good, moral individuals, and act in ways that socially enhance their standing. Yet many still violate their own core values and devalue the way they want to be thought of and harm their own self-image
From experience when challenged on unsustainable practices or behaviours, they exhibit offence, feel judged and move onto the defensive. Only as we work through the origins of their decision, can we start to redefine the actions that they would now be willing to take and start to adapt their preferred ways of working towards a more sustainable model.
John Elkington (5), leading sustainability thought-leader has called for businesses to go further hat firms need to go far further than current government policies and initiatives on net-zero and circular economy have called for, advocating for a net-positive environmental and social values, terming the concept ‘regenerative and business models” advocating for business to actively rectify the past environmental and societal damage it has caused. A worthy goal but given the cumulative impact of many businesses across sectors, and the increasing pace of global degradation, there remains a lot operationally and in leadership, mindsets to be changed.
The climate crisis and the costs associated with transitioning into a low carbon society are often depicted with other sustainability issues as challenges requiring personal sacrifice or demanding self-control.
In our work, we encourage businesses to resist short-term-oriented business decisions and behaviours, in favour of weighing up a longer-term perspective on the issue and final desired business outcome. Our discussions with clients indicate that the development of responsible management practices, employing pro—sustainability habits, allows senior leadership teams to move on from debates revolving around the opposing views of “bad” unsustainable actions and “good” sustainable actions, focussing instead on how unsustainable issues can be addressed in future, how and when to implement sustainable practices, and how internal innovation can address the matter.
A much more satisfactory and rewarding exercise for all parties (including me).
It takes personal bravery for a leader to say ‘stop’ to the business behaviours that have dominated their career, and to reflect on the consequences of past action. This is where executive coaching can assist in providing a safe space in which to explore past business truths against today’s reality. In many cases, their leadership behaviours are rekindled, not through the avoidance of past behaviours through self-control, but through a rekindled interest in the business, its future, and its legacy.
Helping leaders find a new self-identity and meaning in the business’s purpose is I believe a more successful method than the fear of social condemnation, regulatory pressure, or loss of standing in their employee’s eyes.
Everybody needs a purpose, and everybody needs to be engaged in a satisfactory role for their own well-being. Sustainability in business is one route by which modern organisational leaders can deliver for their own and societies greater satisfaction.