UTSpeaks: Sustaining Business (Public forum Part 1 - Suzanne Benn)
UTSpeaks: Sustaining Business Will vision and leadership be the keys that safeguard corporations in an uncertain future? Australia's widely diverse corporations make a 'one-size-fits-all' strategy for adopting sustainable practices impossible. Yet the pressure to transform how business does business has never been greater. In this special UTSpeaks event, senior researchers in business sustainability will introduce and lead a discussion with some of Australia's major corporations in how they are working towards being sustainable enterprises. The strategic approach of each in transforming their business operations also features in a new book - Cases in Corporate Sustainability and Change. We invite you to join us in celebrating the launch of this book and to participate in the enlightening forum to follow. Speakers: Professor Suzanne Benn Suzanne Benn is Professor of Sustainable Enterprise in the UTS Business School and provides leadership across the University and in partnership with external stakeholders to promote sustainability. Suzanne has worked with many Australian organisations to facilitate learning and change for sustainability. Professor Dexter Dunphy Dexter Dunphy has an international reputation for thought leadership, research and consulting in corporate sustainability and the management of organisational change. He has held visiting professorships at major international universities and several of his 24 books are business best sellers. Dexter actively supports and documents sustainability initiatives in leading Australian companies. Dr Bruce Perrott Bruce has been a strategy consultant and senior academic at UTS and UNSW, working with international corporations including the United Nations to develop long-term sustainable growth strategies. His research, teaching and publications cover strategic management and strategic marketing in industries such as health, financial services and government. Special forum panelists representing: Westpac, Fuji Xerox and Interface UTSPEAKS: is a free public lecture series presented by UTS experts discussing a range of important issues confronting contemporary Australia. Use the hashtag #utspeaks to tweet about the lecture on Twitter.
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UTSpeaks: Sustaining Business (Public forum Part 1 - Suzanne Benn)
- 1. UTSpeaks: Sustaining Business Suzanne Benn – 27 October, 2011
- 2. Leadership for strategic sustainability Professor Suzanne Benn
- 3. GLOBAL TRENDS 93% of 766 CEOs of global companies surveyed in 2010 believed that sustainability issues will be critical to the future success of their organisations, and 96% believed that sustainability issues should be fully integrated into strategy and operations (Accenture, 2010) In the third MIT Sloan Review/ Boston Consulting Group survey, just over two- thirds of respondents say that sustainability strategies are necessary to be competitive 40% say they have changed their business models in line with sustainability objectives BUT THE HOW OF SUSTAINABILITY AS STRATEGY IS LACKING
- 4. EMBEDDING SUSTAINABILITY GOALS APPROACHES Comply/ Reinforce Informal/ soft Strategise/ Innovate Formal/ hard Leadership Source: Bertels, 2011
- 5. SIX KEY LEADERSHIP FEATURES Common themes among WBCSD’s 200 companies 1. Understand the context 2. Work beyond boundaries 3. Lead change 4. Enable innovation 5. Manage complexity and cope with uncertainty 6. Apply systems thinking Source: WBCSD, 2011
- 6. SYSTEMS THINKING Entities are often thought of as behaving independently…
- 7. SYSTEMS THINKING In reality, they belong to a system.
- 8. What does systems thinking mean for leadership? Incorporating three approaches to systems thinking Life Cycle Thinking Stakeholder Complex Adaptive Engagement Systems Cyclical material and Iterative cycles of learning Emergence and bottom up energy flows and dialogue change •Transactional and •Shift to stewardship •Enabling leadership. transformative leadership Source: Crittenden et al, 2011; Dunphy & Perrott, 2011; Benn et al, 2011; Porter, 2008; Porter, forthcoming; Porter and Cordoba, 2009; Taylor, 2011
Editor's Notes
- In the book Roy has just launched we are largely presenting cases of positive change because we are continuing our work looking at the how of sustainability. Recent research on the topic including the cases in this book
- Strategic sustainability is about embedding sustainability in products development, services, processes of all kinds from operations to HR, to product development and marketing. This diagram indicating the fore principles of embedding sustainability is built from recent research from Network for Business Sustainability, which reviewed more than 13,000 academic articles and practitioner reports. Managing tensions in both goals and approaches characterises the challenges of embedding sustainability. This was illustrated to us in our recent research on Sustainability Advantage program for NSW OEH , where businesses noted tension between need for benchmarking and standardisation in an uncertain and emergent field and the need for flexible highly contextualised responses to sustainabilityResolving or indeed managing these tensions, because it may not be the best approach to resolve them, is the task of leadership
- This slide summrises research from World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Cases in book exemplify many of these themes. Underpinning theme is arguably leadership that supports and develops systems thinking, this involves managing multiple boundaries and different approaches to systems thinking
- Applying different leadership approaches - working with limitations of each approach . Flexibility and commitment, walking the talkFunctionalist: linear cause and effect, outputs can be maximisedInterpretative: Meaning is subjective, socially constructed, and not self-evidentCAS: Densely connected networks of agents, self-organisation, and emergence. Ongoing learning and bottom up evolution. Well suited for today’s turbulent marketplaces. Shift to stewardship style of leadership. Not applicable in all systems and situations.Bruce will now introduce some ideas on how these different approaches to systems thinking can be applied to further our understanding of the materiality of sustainability …..