ENVS 5150 Corporate Sector Strategies. Course Overview Focus on overall economic context some attention to practical business problems Postindustrial:

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.