rapidly transforming under the impact of high levels of innovation
highly competitive
driven by knowledge development
consuming resources at unsustainable levels
Welcome to the world of
Dexter Dunphy
Welcome to the world of
unpredictable change
and the
chaordic organisation
The dilemma and the challenge
The Dilemma: we cannot continue to conduct business as usual
The Challenge: to create a sustainable economy and society
Readings: J. Porritt, Capitalism: As if the world matters, Earthscan, London, UK, 2006
R. Wright, A Short History of Progress, Text Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2004
WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?
Sustainability results from activities which:
extend the socially useful life of organisations
enhance the planet’s ability to maintain and renew the viability of the biosphere and protect all living species
enhance society’s ability to maintain itself and to solve its major problems
maintain a decent level of welfare for present and future generations of humanity
Sustainable organisations engage in activities that contribute in these four ways.
Can we rely on governments to achieve a sustainable world?
“Like it or not, the responsibility for insuring a sustainable world falls largely on the shoulders of the world’s enterprises, the economic engines of the future.”
Professor Stuart Hart
Kenan-Flager Business School, USA
So how will the drive for sustainability affect you and your organisation?
So how will the drive for sustainability affect you and your organisation?
What should you be doing now as a HR leader to plan for sustainability?
What do you need to do to get up to speed now to ensure you and your organisation are prepared and contributing?
First, we need to understand that achieving sustainability is a process – organisations advance by stages
Rejection
Non-responsiveness
Compliance
Efficiency
Strategic proactivity
The sustaining corporation
The Phase Model
From Dunphy, D. , Griffiths, A. and Benn, S., Organisational Change for Corporate Sustainability, Routledge, London and New York, 2003; revised edition 2007)
Less formally, the organisations at these stages can be labelled:
Less formally, the organisations at these stages can be labelled:
Phase 1: the freeloaders and stealthy saboteurs
Phase 2: the “bunker wombats”
Phase 3: the reactive minimalists
Phase 4: the industrious stewards
Phase 5: the proactive strategists
Phase 6: the transformative futurists
Nudging or leaping?
Copyright Dunphy, Griffiths and Benn, Organizational Change for Corporate Sustainability, 2007
A blueprint for transformation (from Q. Jones, D. Dunphy et al, In Great Company: Unlocking the Secrets of Cultural Transformation, Human Synergistics, Sydney, 2007, copyright)
So where are the opportunities?
Leave the Freeloaders, Stealthy Saboteurs and Bunker Wombats to experience increasing isolation
The real opportunities begin with the Compliance Phase.
So let’s look more closely at the last four phases: compliance, efficiency, strategic proactivity and the sustaining corporation.
3. COMPLIANCE PHASE: The Reactive Minimalists
Objective: Seek to be compliant to the law and all environmental, health and safety requirements and relevant community expectations.
Business opportunities: Avoid the potentially huge costs of non-compliance and create an effective risk management system.
Typical actions:
Determine what is relevant legislation, regulations and community expectations
Build an effective risk management system with an informed workforce committed to compliance
Establish organised measurement and monitoring system.
Positive outcomes:
Risk minimisation
Easier finance
Basis for positive reputation
Improved relationships with regulators.
Capabilities for effective operation with organisations in the Compliance Phase
Knowledge of relevant legislation/regulations
Monitoring of community expectations
Risk management expertise
Ability to construct measurement/monitoring systems
Resource: Compliance Institute of Australia
4. EFFICIENCY PHASE: The Industrious Stewards
Objective: Progressively eliminate waste and increase process and materials efficiencies.
Key business opportunity: Increase efficiencies by waste reduction and reorganisation.
Typical actions:
Reduce resource use (energy, water, materials)
Design/redesign buildings/plant to dramatically reduce ‘footprint’, create adaptable spaces
Move to front-of-pipe solutions to eliminate waste or return it to the production cycle as a resource (biomimicry).
Reputation and confidence in working with CEO/senior executives
Active involvement in leadership of the sustainability movement
Is Corporate Sustainability Possible?
A case study in hopeful achievement:
Fuji-Xerox Eco-Manufacturing Centre
FX moved from selling to leasing office equipment
The Eco-MC takes used products, reprocesses their componentry, rebuilds the machines
Most parts are recycled in the plant
Zero waste to landfill
“Waste” becomes important to others (e.g. carbon to steel making)
Rebuilt products have enhanced quality and reliability
Major R & D payoff
Basis for new business
Savings in 2000 = $25 million
Savings in 2001 = $30 million
Since then, 20% ROI
To achieve these results demanded a transformation of the corporate culture.
What’s the relevance of all this to HR?
Movement toward sustainability depends on corporate culture change: achieving sustainability involves a major transformation of business assumptions and practices
Science and technology will be vital but successful planning and implementation will depend on people
If the introduction of sustainable business practices is directed only by technologists, human factors will be ignored, underestimated and implementation will fail
Given the increasing priority of sustainability issues, HR must be a key part of the change or it will be shouldered aside.
Achieving human sustainability
Achieving human sustainability
Constructing the human sustainability agenda:
the internal agenda
Adopt a strategic perspective on workplace development
Build the corporate knowledge and skill base
Foster productive diversity
Increase employees’ role in decision-making
Develop capability for corporate reshaping and renewal: revisioning, reflexivity, redesign
Ensure that investment in people enhances present and future performance, including ecological sustainability.
the external agenda
Reinterpret strategy around a range of stakeholders
Add value for all stakeholders
Sustain on-going dialogue with stakeholders
Define social goals and action plans with KPIs
Build stakeholder support for license to operate and grow.
A new challenge for HR: Constructing the ecological sustainability agenda
Initiate life cycle assessment and resource stewardship throughout the organisation and in its supply chain
Eliminate waste and pollution by product/service redesign and development of industrial ecology
Form active partnerships with community groups to inform, critique and collaborate on sustainability initiatives
Institute external monitoring, reduce environmental footprint
The central problem for leaders working to create a sustainable world:
Our leadership objective:
Sustainable and sustaining organisations that -
add financial value for shareholders
produce valued goods and services for society
sustain those who work for organisations
sustain our social world
sustain and renew the biosphere
Third wave organizations
Value-driven and transformative
Responsive to emerging shift in global values
Making corporate citizenship and corporate sustainability core business strategies
Resource books: how to do it
D. Stace and D. Dunphy, Beyond the Boundaries: Leading and Recreating the Successful Enterprise, 2nd edn, McGraw Hill, Sydney, 2001
D. Dunphy, A Griffiths and S. Benn, Organisational Change for Corporate Sustainability, 2nd ed., Routledge, London, 2003
Q. Jones, D. Dunphy et al, In Great Company: Unlocking the Secrets of corporate Transformation, Human Synergistics, Sydney, 2007
D. Grayson and A. Hodges, Corporate Social Opportunity - 7 steps to make corporate social responsibility work for your business, Greenleaf, Sheffield UK, 2004
B. Willard, The Next Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-In, New Society Publishers, Canada, 2005
B Doppelt Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change Management Guide for Business,Government and Civil Society, Greenleaf, Sheffield UK, 2003.
