For businesses to have a fighting chance of enduring success, they can no longer be half-hearted or tentative about sustainability, according to a new book co-authored by 星空体育官网 School of Management Emeritus Professor David Grayson CBE.
Businesses now have to go ‘All in’ to secure long-term commercial success and, business leaders must proactively engage with society and embrace circular economy models to survive and thrive.
Written by three leading thinkers in the field of sustainability - David Grayson (星空体育官网 School of Management), Chris Coulter (GlobeScan) and Mark Lee (SustainAbility) - ‘All In’ identifies the essential attributes of high-impact corporate sustainability leadership and describes how companies can combine and apply those characteristics for future success.
The book draws on the perspectives of thousands of experts globally as collected via the GlobeScan-SustainAbility Leaders Survey over two decades and reveals insights from dozens of interviews with Chairs, CEOs and Chief Sustainability Officers explaining how they have gained recognition, created value and boosted resiliency based on their corporate sustainability leadership.
This is illustrated through examples featuring pioneering global companies, including 3M, Google, GE, Huawei, IKEA, Nike, Patagonia, Tata, and Toyota, as well as detailed case studies highlighting two of the Leaders Surveys’ top performers over time, Interface and Unilever.
‘All In’ defines a leadership framework for the long-term success of companies built around five key attributes.
- Purpose - a societal Purpose beyond profit maximization that galvanizes the organization to make a substantive positive difference in the world, and which describes how the business creates value both for business and society (e.g. Nestlé, IKEA)
- Plan - a comprehensive Plan to embed sustainability throughout the business (e.g. Walmart, Marks & Spencer)
- Culture - an innovative, empowering, open and accountable Culture which enables all other attributes (e.g. Nike, Google)
- Collaboration - the skill and will to identify and undertake Collaboration in support of the Purpose and Plan (e.g. through the Consumer Goods Forum and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition)
- Advocacy - an Advocacy approach characterized by speaking up and speaking out for pro颅 sustainable development policies, norms and behaviors and broader systemic change
David Grayson CBE, Emeritus Professor of Corporate Responsibility at 星空体育官网 School of Management, said: “All In focuses on the role of the private sector and concludes that business leadership in sustainable development is central to developing and maintaining the kind of markets and economies that the environment and society need to thrive. Today’s multinational businesses have unparalleled scale and reach, touching thousands of suppliers and billions of consumers across hundreds of countries. They are the most global set of actors in existence, with both the ability and responsibility to drive greater sustainability across markets and society.”
“Looking to the future, we see a fourth epoch of corporate sustainability leadership on the horizon, which we are labelling The Regenerative Era. We believe that as we get clos