8 Ways To Be An Environmentally Conscious Manager
What does it mean to bring your
individual environmental values to work every day? Here's how eco-friendly
managers can practice what they preach.
In an interview about his recent
book Profits and Sustainability, which portrays the iconoclastic
entrepreneurs who built green startups in the 19th century, Harvard Business
School historian Geoffrey Jones notes that being a business-environmentalist
can be hard work.
"The green entrepreneurs in this book
broke with multiple conventions. Not surprisingly, they were often treated by
contemporaries as crazy. It turns out that yesterday’s crazies are the
historical origins of the sustainable world of the future," says Jones.
With growing awareness that planet-friendly
values don't necessarily conflict with making a profit, business leaders today
don't face such formidable challenges to their views. Still, what can managers
do to ensure that their industries, their companies, their workplaces, their
work, support the environment? Here are ideas from HBS researchers.
Follow your values
Stella
McCartney Combines High Fashion with Environmental Values
Fashion designer Stella
McCartney shows that luxury and sustainability need not be mutually
exclusive in a case study by Anat Keinan.
Demonstrate bottom-line returns
3
Ways Firms Can Profit From Environmental Investments
Rebecca Henderson lays out three ways
for firms to profit from investing in environmental sustainability:
forestalling risk, increasing operational efficiency, and selling to the
environmental niche.
Build a new role for yourself
Who
Is the Chief Sustainability Officer?
There are only a few dozen chief
sustainability officers in American companies, although their number has been
growing rapidly. A new study by George
Serafeim and Kathleen Millerexplains who they are, where they
come from, and how to make them more effective.
Think big
MBA students participating in Harvard
Business School’s Climate Change Challenge offer ideas on how companies can
negate impacts from a changing environment.
Understand that solutions don’t come
easily
‘Big
Teaming,’ Audacious Innovation, and the Uncompleted Dream of a Smart City
How do you organize a project that spans
professions, industries, and even nations? A new book by Amy
Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds describes the approach of
'big teaming' with a case study of a high-profile smart city.
Don’t
be afraid to be a little out there
Meet
the Oddball Entrepreneurs Who Invented Green Businesses
It was entrepreneurs from the
fringes-of-society who gave birth to the green business movement starting in
the 19th century, Geoffrey Jones tells us.
The Business and Environment Initiative at
Harvard Business School aims to shift the debate about climate change from a
political discussion to a practical conversation about risk and reward.
Identify eco-friendly partners
Should
Industry Competitors Cooperate More to Solve World Problems?
George Serafeim has a theory that if
industry competitors collaborated more, big world problems could start to be
addressed. Is that even possible in a market economy?
by Sean Silverthorne
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/8-ways-to-be-an-environmentally-conscious-manager?cid=spmailing-19375115-WK%20Newsletter%2003-21-2018%20(1)-March%2021,%202018
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