Today’s and Tomorrow’s Sustainability Professionals — Not in Agreement
By Nathalie Mantel & Johanna Hallin
“What purpose does a company serve in the world?” This question was posed by one of the 100+ students involved, as we matched students and sustainability professionals in a discussion on the future of business earlier this year. It cuts right to the point — what is business in our day and age?
The idea of matching the future of sustainability, through the voices of university students, with the today, through the voices of sustainability professionals, sprung from our ongoing exploration of how business can contribute to a sustainable world. Inter Business is a knowledge lab, dedicated to this very question and founded on the insight that we need a new perspective to capture the integrated and interconnected everyday of business today.
During our first year of in existence, we have hosted numerous interviews and conversations with business leaders and managers on the future of corporate sustainability: What are you doing at the moment? Where are you headed? Who is involved?
Building on appreciative inquiry and grounded research, we gather insights and publish our findings. One example is “Swedish Business Leaders Prospecting Sustainability”, and one perspective that keeps arising is the fast pace of change in the field of sustainability. Many leaders express the feeling of building the road whilst driving the car. The understanding of corporate sustainability is transforming.
This sparked our curiosity, and we set out to investigate how this building and driving and looking ahead rhymes with the expectations of the next generation of professionals.
During this spring of 2018, we asked a group of 100+ sustainability professionals and students, about what they thought about the future of corporate sustainability. What role has a company to play in a rapidly changing world with many shared challenges? They got the same questions, and we compared the answers.
To deepen our understanding, we also hosted 10+ in depth interviews with representatives from each group.
What we found was quite interesting:
Having different priorities
When being asked what companies should prioritize to ensure sustainable development, we got vastly different answers from the two groups.
- Sustainability managers: Emphasized the need for building circular economies, working strategically with corporate values and bringing forth innovations for the future.
- Students: Wanted more transparent product information to make the best consumer choices, encourages companies to share experiences and “teach” politicians about sustainability — and more transparence and insight into corporate sustainability work.
Looking to different leaders
Perhaps most interesting is two groups different views of power to change — who’s the leader of the pack which will take us towards a better tomorrow.
- Sustainability managers: Voiced a wish for harsher regulation on companies from politicians.
- Students: Don’t trust politicians as change agents, but instead put their hope to the abilities of business to lead positive change.
Another conclusion from our work is that the role of a company in our context is very dual. The UN Agenda 2030 has highlighted businesses as key actors when solving our shared global challenges, and the need to develop sustainable business models and ensure positive impact on people and planet is dire. Still, our research shows a much more basic need — the need to collectively understand the purpose companies serve in the world, as well as to define their responsibility and change agency.
Please read the entire article published in Journal of Business Theory and Practice: What purpose does a company serve in the world? Swedish students and sustainability professionals in dialogue on corporate sustainability.
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Nathalie Mantel is the COO of Inter Business Initiative, a knowledge lab, developing framework towards holistic value creation where business can act as change agents in a world where sustainability, responsibility, agency are business as usual.
Johanna Hallin is the founder and Chair of Inter Business, and her (my) day job is CEO of Srey.
