envs 5150 corporate sector strategies. course overview focus on overall economic context some...
TRANSCRIPT
ENVS 5150
Corporate Sector Strategies
Course Overview
• Focus on overall economic context• some attention to practical business problems
• Postindustrial: the Redefinition of Wealth• Sectors & use-value• Distinctions between
– protection & alternatives– big & small business; corporate & community
• Importance of “values-driven” or “mission-driven” business
• Relationships within and outside of the firm
The Green Economy
• A Historical Transition: …from Quantity to Quality
• A Question of Potentials …not simply limits
• Key to Sustainability: Redefining Wealth
Redefining Wealth
Quantitative: Money & Material
Accumulation
Qualitative: Well-being
Regeneration
Industrialism: The Divided Economy
Invisible Visible Use-value Exchange-value “Consumption” “Production” People Things Unpaid Paid Women Men Informal Formal Private Public
Invisible Economy (1) Total Productive System of an Industrial Society
(layer cake with icing)
GNP-Monetized
½ of CakeTop two layers
Non-Monetized
Productive ½ of Cake
Lower two layers
GNP “Private” SectorRests on
GNP “Public” SectorRests on
Social Cooperative
Love EconomyRests on
Nature’s Layer
“Private” Sector
“Public”Sector
“underground economy
“Love Economy”
Mother Nature
All rights reserved. Copyright© 1982 Hazel Henderson
2
Basics of a Green Economy
1. The Service Economy“Hot Showers and Cold Beer”
Nutrition, Illumination, Entertainment, Access, Shelter, Community, etc.
2. The “Lake Economy”Flowing with nature, Every output an input,
Closed-loop organization, Let nature do the work
Structural obstacles to sustainability
• Nature of the Corporation & the SBL
• Centrality of Economic Growth• Ownership patterns inconsistent
with Stewardship• Alienated relationship to human
need– Creating rather than
responding to it
The Corporation in History• initial charters
• the Corporate Person & industrialization
• Bureaucracy: the rise of Big Organization
• Fordism: Mass production & the crisis of effective demand – postwar Waste Economy
• Post-Fordism: “commanding heights” shift from manufacturing to finance and retail, globalization & outsourcing
The Business Case for Sustainability
• Single Bottom Line Sustainability (SBLS)
• Essential to large corporations
• Not sufficient to create ecological economies
Corporations need outside help!
Internal & External Action
• The balance is different for big & small business
• Relationship between democracy & economic evolution
• Centrality of Stakeholder relationships
• Importance of New Enterprise Networks
General Priorities• labour vs. resource intensity
--beyond cog-labour; upgrading work (“human capital”)• qualitative indicators of wealth and progress
--corporate accounting / community indicators• place-based production & development• economic democracy: workers, community, society• organizational change: structure & culture that infuses all
operations with sustainability goals & practices.• transparency: de-monopolizing information • restructuring of manufacturing: means/ends• marketing: affects all aspects of the firm
Quantification & Value
• What is measured gets done
• What gets counted is valued;
What is valued gets counted
Indicators
“[If it is to be achieved, the new economic system] will result from our becoming better ecological accountants at the community level. If we must as a future necessity recycle essentially all materials and run on sunlight, then our future will depend on accounting as the most important and interesting discipline.”
Wes Jackson,
Becoming Native to This Place
A Dashboard for the Cockpit
The ‘Family’ of indicators:– Urban Metabolism or regional mass balance– Green GDP (e.g. Genuine Progress Indicator—GPI )– Ecological Footprint– Carbon accounting / carbon footprint– Life-cycle Assessment (products, processes, landscapes)– Industry-based accounts: food, building, forestry, etc.– ISO 14000– Local Development Standards– 5 ‘capitals’: personal, professional, spiritual, environmental
and financial– Firm sustainability accounting– Sustainable Community Indicators– Risk Assessment, EIA, etc.
Market Transformation
• Social & Environmental Values become drivers of “mindful markets”
• Money & capital increasingly a means (not the end-goal) of economic development
• Involves the transformation of regulation —incentives & disincentives built into everyday economic life
Distributed Regulation• Need for incentives &
disincentives embedded in everyday production & exchange.
• 3rd Party certification systems as non-state regulation.
• Finance & taxation as regulation• Power of “collective consumerism”• B-Corp: certification of corporate
governance: changing corporate DNA
• Ownership tailored to stewardship and democracy.