Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices
, and partly in recognition of the
fact that large companies can do much to help restore some balance to climate
systems by reducing greenhouse gases and dependence on oil, while still saving
money for customers. Finally, as Mirvis and Coocins (2004) suggest, one way to
distinguish companies that talk about social responsibility from those that live it is
to observe what employees are doing about it.
Moving beyond business efficiency
Some business commentators have suggested that eco-efficiency is just one aspect
of creating a sustainable business, for the real challenge is to ensure that social,
economic and environmental aims are integrated under a single sustainability objective.
This integration will involve understanding both production and consumption,
including the nature of entrepreneurship, marketing and the generation of consumer
wants (Young and Tilley, 2006). A pro-sustainable business practice requires a pro-
sustainable entrepreneurship and this too requires an integrative approach as seen
in
Figure 7.2
.
For Young and Tilley, the hope is that sustainability entrepreneurship will become
more than the sum of its interrelated parts and 'the only “entrepreneurial” route to
fulfilling sustainable development' (Tilley and Young, 2009: 86). Thus, sustainability
entrepreneurs will need to be, among other things, life-style motivators, as well as
being concerned to maintain the sustainability of their company. Such advocates will
also need to look beyond not only efficiency but the profit motive, too. As Lux
(2003) has argued, companies need to be motivated by the common good rather
than private gain: common good - non-profit - sustainability as opposed to self-
interest profit motive - growth. However, there are problems. A major one is that,
as Tilley and Young (2009) acknowledge, the sustainability entrepreneur is still very
much an abstract construct and that in capitalist society, despite all the various forms
of entrepreneurship emerging and developing, the dominant bias is still towards
economic self-interest.
There are models of business activity, such as social enterprise, that although not
yet 'business as usual' could conceivably prefigure how businesses could operate to
secure a more sustainable future. In
Social Enterprise in Anytown
, John Pearce (2003)
argues that social enterprise should be defined as:
•
having a social purpose or purposes;
•
achieving the social purposes by, at least in part, engaging in trade in the market-
place;
•
not distributing profits to individuals;
•
holding assets and wealth in trust for community benefit;
•
democratically involving members of its constituency in the governance of the
organization; and
•
being independent organizations accountable to a defined constituency and to
the wider community.
Bill Drayton (2003), Chairman of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, writes that
social entrepreneurs focus their entrepreneurial skills and talents on solving social
problems such as underachievement in children, the digital divide, environmental
