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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Go-to guidance for designing, implementing, and managing effective sustainability programs and their management systems
Moving past vague concepts, buzzword overloads, superficial efforts, and flavor-of-the-month misdirections, Sustainability Programs presents a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to creating and managing adaptable, organization-wide sustainability programs to achieve People, Planet, and Profit (3P) objectives with least cost, effort, and risk. Key steps covered in this book include reaching a programmatic “Go” decision, developing sustainability policies, designing an organizational framework, defining the most pressing sustainability needs, and cascading 3P goals, tactics, targets, and initiatives into business units, functions, and departments to create new capabilities and improve performance.
By following the principles and practices in this book, any organization can better achieve sustainability’s full promise of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and financial performance. Written by authors with a wealth of practitioner experience in the field, Sustainability Programs explores topics including:
- Creating social, environmental, and financial strategies, tactics, targets, and initiatives that create new capabilities and resolve 3P performance issues
- Avoiding ad hoc projects that fail to address critical sustainability issues, wasting valuable resources and squandering competitive advantages
- Overcoming technical professionals’ lack of business management experience and helping management professionals understand sustainability’s benefits and intricacies
- Understanding sustainability through the management lenses of risk reduction, improved efficiencies through eradication of wastes, increased revenues via innovation, and enhanced competitive advantages fueled by greenwash-free transparency.
- Responding to the demanding data capture, analysis, and reporting challenges of environmental, social, and governance (ESG).
Acknowledging that one size does not fit all, this book delivers individual concepts and methods adaptable across any organization’s value chains. It is an essential read for leaders and practitioners working within private and public enterprises of all types and sizes, especially those with 2,000 to 5,000 employees.
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Seitenzahl: 392
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
The Distinction Between Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance
Operationalizing Sustainability
Sustainability Management System Scalability
Achieving Sustainability with Familiar Management Concepts
The Book's Approach to Sustainability Program Management
The Authors' Qualifications
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
1 Introduction
1.1 SMS Best Management Concepts
1.2 Target Readers
1.3 The Book's Objectives
1.4 The Need for This Book
1.5 How the Book's Approach Differs from Others
1.6 When Can Measurable Progress Be Expected?
1.7 Notes about Industry Standards and Government Regulations
1.8 A Risk to Sustainability Program Success
1.9 Consequences of Failing to Act
1.10 Advice for Leaders, Small Organizations, and Aspiring Sustainability Practitioners
1.11 Chapter Takeaways
1.12 Further Reading
2 Essential Sustainability Management System Concepts
2.1 The Relationships Between Organizational Structure, Performance, and Culture
2.2 Key Concepts
2.3 Management Perspectives on Building an Effective Sustainability Program
2.4 Chapter Takeaways
2.5 Further Reading
3 The Importance of Change Management
3.1 Structure, Behavior, Performance, and Culture
3.2 A Change Management Appendix
3.3 Chapter Takeaways
3.4 Further Reading
4 Sustainability Management System Design Considerations
4.1 Cautionary Notes Regarding SMS Design Flexibility
4.2 A Format for Answering SMS Design Questions
4.3 High‐level System Plan Phase: SMS Initiation
4.4 Operations‐level Plan Phase: SMS Administration
4.5 Operations‐level Do‐and‐Check Phase: Capability Creation and Performance Improvement
4.6 Operations and High‐level Act Phase: SMS Enhancement
4.7 Some Additional Thoughts on Change Management
4.8 Sustainability Software Applications and SMS Documentation Boilerplate
4.9 Chapter Takeaways
4.10 Further Reading
5 The Sustainability Program Go‐Decision and Policy Development
5.1 The Business Case for Sustainability
5.2 Organizational Change Considerations
5.3 The Utility of ISO and Other Management System Standards
5.4 The “Go‐Decision” to Create the Sustainability Program
5.5 The Overarching Sustainability Policy
5.6 Relationships Between Sustainability Policy and Mission, Vision, and Values Statements
5.7 Chapter Takeaways
5.8 Further Reading
6 A Model Sustainability Management System Organization Structure
6.1 The SMS's Organization Structure
6.2 Leadership Roles in the SMS
6.3 Support Roles for the Sustainability Management System
6.4 The Capability Creation and Performance Improvement Roles in the SMS
6.5 Chapter Takeaways
6.6 Further Reading
7 The Sustainability Management System's Initial Needs Assessment
7.1 Define the Topical Scope and Organizational Scale of the SMS
7.2 The First Step in Defining an SMS's Strategic Goals, Tactical Objectives and Targets, and Initiatives
7.3 The Use of Outside Experts to Conduct an SMS Needs Assessment
7.4 An Approach to an Initial SWOT Analysis
7.5 Who Conducts the SWOT Analysis?
7.6 Preparing SSTs for Their SWOT Analyses
7.7 The SWOT Analysis Process
7.8 Some Sustainability Ideas are Better Than Others: Prioritizing SWOT Findings
7.9 Aggregating, Reviewing, and Approving the SWOT Analysis Results
7.10 The Next SMS Planning Steps
7.11 Chapter Takeaways
7.12 Further Reading
8 Define the Sustainability Management System's Strategic Goals
8.1 Essential Concepts in the Cascading Process
8.2 Converting Prioritized OFIs into Strategic Sustainability Goals
8.3 Performance Breakthrough Goals
8.4 Frequency of Defining and Updating Strategic Goals
8.5 Future Needs Assessments and Strategy Development
8.6 Chapter Takeaways
8.7 Further Reading
9 Define the Sustainability Management System's Tactical Objectives and Targets
9.1 A Deeper Dive into the Linkage Concept
9.2 A Process for Converting Strategic Goals into Tactical Objectives and Targets
9.3 SMS Oversight Group, Sustainability Specialty Teams, and Other Personnel Roles
9.4 Examples of Tactics
9.5 Refining the List of Tactical Objectives and Targets
9.6 Chapter Takeaways
9.7 Further Reading
10 Capability Creation and Performance Improvement Initiatives
10.1 Accountability Assignments
10.2 Project Design
10.3 Requests for Additional Project Resources
10.4 Milestone Progress Reports
10.5 Assistance in Defining Root Causes and Corrective Actions
10.6 End‐of‐Project and Multi‐Quarter‐Project Assessments
10.7 Restart the Quarterly SMS Improvement Cycle
10.8 Chapter Takeaways
10.9 Further Reading
11 Annual Administrative Assessment and Improvement of the SMS
11.1 The Annual SMS Administrative Assessment
11.2 Internal and External Assessments, Inspections, Audits, and Surveys
11.3 The Critical Importance of the SMS Check Function in Supply Chain Management
11.4 Chapter Takeaways
11.5 Further Reading
Appendix A: Origins and Evolution of the SMS Model
A.1 Introduction: Where We Have Been and Where We Are
A.2 In the Beginning: The 1960s and 1970s
A.3 Quality Assurance Morphs into CI Organizational Management Systems – The 1980s
A.4 CI Management Systems Become Green: The 1990s
A.5 Time Out for Reflection in the 1990s
A.6 The 21st Century Part 1: CI Management Concepts Applied in a Tough Environment
A.7 The 21st Century Part 2: Getting Greener
A.8 The 21st Century Part 3: Those Who Can Also Teach
A.9 The Evolved Sustainability Management System Model
Appendix B: Essential Change Management Concepts
B.1 Overview of Change Management
B.2 Change Management Success and Failure Factors
B.3 Schools of Thought within Change Management
B.4 Essential Change Management Concepts
B.5 The Role of a Change Agent
B.6 Change Agent Dos and Don'ts
B.7 Preparations for Change
B.8 Anticipating and Managing Obstructions
B.9 Institutionalizing Change
B.10 Closing Thoughts on Change Management
Appendix C: Sustainability Learning and Information Resources
C.1 The Need for Sustainability Education, Instruction, and Training
C.2 Types of Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Offerings
C.3 Sustainability‐themed Master of Business Administration Degree Programs
C.4 Sustainability‐themed Professional Certificate and Accreditation Programs
C.5 Sustainability‐themed Short Courses and Other Resources
C.6 Management‐themed Learning Resources
C.7 Online Sustainability Libraries and Other Information Resources
Appendix D: Special Considerations Regarding ISO Management System Standards
Appendix E: Examples of Project Planning Worksheets
E.1 Project Summary Worksheet
E.2 Task Description Worksheet
E.3 Project Schedule Worksheet
E.4 Project Budget Worksheet
Appendix F: An Advanced Needs Assessment Method: Life Cycle Assessment
F.1 Introduction
F.2 What is a Life Cycle Assessment?
F.3 The Life Cycle Perspective
F.4 Key Environmental Assessment and Industrial Engineering Ideas in LCA
F.5 Simplicity is a Virtue with LCA
F.6 Scoping a Life Cycle Assessment
F.7 Impact Assessment
F.8 Inclusion of LCA Findings and Recommendations in an SMS
Glossary
Biographies
References
Articles
Books
Case Study Sources
Corporate ESG and Sustainability Reports
Other Resources
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Generalized Concept Map: The SMS Model.
Figure 1.2 Recommended Chapters and Appendices.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Typical Organizational Structure Elements.
Figure 2.2 Business Focus in an SMS.
Figure 2.3 Typical Concerns in an SMS.
Figure 2.4 Detailed Process Map: The SMS Model.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 The 5Ws & 1H + Check Format.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 A Model SMS Organization Chart.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 SMS Administration Concerns.
Figure 7.2 Internal Operations Concerns.
Figure 7.3 Upstream and Downstream Environmental Concerns.
Figure 7.4 Social Responsibility Concerns.
Figure 7.5 SWOT Analysis Dimensions.
Figure 7.6 Subjective Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for Adverse Factors...
Figure 7.7 Subjective FMEA‐Style Analysis for Beneficial Factors.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Cascading Relationships Between Policy, Strategies, Tactics, and ...
Figure 8.2 The Failure of MBO Systems.
Figure 8.3 Examples of Sustainability's Potential Transparency Benefits.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Tactical Objectives and Targets Assignment Matrix.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Quarterly Schedule of SMS PDCA Cycle Activities.
Appendix B
Figure B.1 Kurt Lewin's. Three Phases of Change Management.
Figure B.2 Communications Planning Matrix.
Appendix E
Figure E.1 Project Summary Worksheet.
Figure E.2 Task Description Worksheet.
Figure E.3 Example of a Completed Project Schedule Worksheet.
Figure E.4 Project Schedule Worksheet.
Figure E.5 Project Budget Worksheet.
Appendix F
Figure F.1 A Simple View of a Life Cycle.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
Begin Reading
Appendix A Origins and Evolution of the SMS Model
Appendix B Essential Change Management Concepts
Appendix C Sustainability Learning and Information Resources
Appendix D Special Considerations Regarding ISO Management System Standards
Appendix E Examples of Project Planning Worksheets
Appendix F An Advanced Needs Assessment Method: Life Cycle Assessment
Glossary
Biographies
References
Index
End User License Agreement
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Sustainability Programs
A Design Guide to Achieving Financial, Social, and Environmental Performance
William Borges and John Grosskopf
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
Published by JohnWiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Preface
Climate change and other environmental and social impacts are real, pervasive, and increasing thereby affecting nearly every organization regardless of industry sector, size, or location.
Although current progress in managing sustainability issues is promising, it is typically reactive, piecemeal, and far too limited to environmental concerns. Increasingly, organization leaders recognize these shortcomings and seek innovative, financially beneficial responses to environmental impacts, social needs, and organizational governance. Plus, they are seeking better, cost‐effective ways to anticipate and respond to pressures from equity holders, regulators, advocates, competitors, customers, and communities.
While promising individual sustainability initiatives abound, they have yet to be integrated into the broad body of conventional organizational management principles and practices. Because sustainability is relatively new and ill‐defined, organizations often need help integrating it into their overarching management system (MS). As a result, sustainability initiatives are often ad hoc efforts and distractions that address squeaky‐wheel and flavor‐of‐the‐month issues. Consequently, current efforts in most organizations cannot achieve sustainability's promise and full value as an essential management discipline.
The Distinction Between Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance
Although the terms sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) are often used interchangeably, it is essential to distinguish between them. Focused on ensuring the long‐term viability of an organization's operations, sustainability is a holistic approach focused on managing the dynamics between environmental, social, and economic matters. The goals are to benefit financially while contributing to society and reducing adverse environmental effects. Complimenting this approach, ESG uses specific criteria to assess and communicate an organization's efforts to manage sustainability‐related risks and opportunities. In simpler terms, sustainability can be considered the management activities dealing with social and environmental risks and opportunities, whereas ESG evaluates and reports those activities.
This distinction is significant because most of the book's organizational development prescriptions focus on creating systemic and systematic organizational structures and processes to identify and resolve specific environmental, social, and financial issues. However, the focus shifts in the last chapter, Chapter 11, to the overall sustainability program efficacy assessment and reporting activities that are essential to ESG evaluations and reports. Instead of a common approach, where an organization searches through its units, functions, and departments for miscellaneous people, planet, and profit (3P)‐related activities to fill the pages of a periodic ESG‐focused report, the book's approach provides an organization with intentional, substantial programmatic accomplishments.
Operationalizing Sustainability
Sustainability and ESG are undergoing far‐reaching transformations due to widespread recognition of ecological degradations, social inequities, ever‐increasing competitive and stakeholder pressures, and rapid changes in legislation and regulations. In response, this book systematically guides organizations in comprehensively identifying, prioritizing, and acting on their most pressing 3P needs within their resource limits and opportunities. Further, it provides them with proven management concepts and processes to operationalize sustainability in a manner that enables fact‐based, greenwash‐free ESG evaluations and reporting.
Unlike other approaches to sustainability program development that stress sustainability's specialized concerns and altruistic motivations, which, of course, are critically important, this book translates such ideas into these conventional management activities:
Risk management
Cost and expense reduction by eradicating wastes of all kinds
Revenue enhancement through product and service innovation, and
Competitive advantage gains through transparency.
By doing so, the business case for sustainability can be seamlessly integrated into organizational management activities, making it appealing to even the most ardent of critics.
Sustainability Management System Scalability
The book's sustainability management system (SMS) design, implementation, and management processes can best be realized in large‐scale enterprises with approximately 2000 to 5000 employees. These typically have the critical mass of material and personnel resources, organizational agility, and management expertise to effectively employ the book's methods.
Irrespective of size, any organization in the private and public sectors with rudimentary technical capabilities and determined management can operationalize sustainability by selectively tailoring the book's ideas and processes. Selective tailoring is necessary to scale down the concepts and methods at smaller and resource‐constrained organizations. Not to be left out are the huge, highly complex organizations that can benefit by scaling up the ideas and processes in this book, no matter the current status of their sustainability programs.
Achieving Sustainability with Familiar Management Concepts
The SMS design, implementation, and management processes are based on proven continuous improvement (CI) models used by private‐ and public‐sector organizations. The origins and evolution of the book's SMS model are described in Appendix A. Underlying these processes is the Plan‐Do‐Check‐Act (PDCA) cycle, an essential concept in well‐known CI procedures such as Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, and the various International Organization for Standardization (ISO) MS standards.
Notably, by focusing on discrete quality, environmental management, health and safety, energy, and social responsibility topics, ISO and other standards are not often integrated into a single, more efficient MS that comprehensively addresses sustainability's 3P objectives. However, the newly released ISO/UNDP PAS 53002 Guidelines for Contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals significantly expand the range of MS sustainability topics. This book's SMS model provides a timely and highly effective method to integrate new sustainability and previously released standards and guidance into an organization's overarching MS. By integrating this wider range of sustainability‐related concerns with general management ones, existing CI MSs have a better chance of achieving sustainability's full 3P potential.
The good news for organizations currently using topical CI MSs – especially those based on ISO standards – is that this book's methods require few fundamental modifications to achieve sustainability goals. The most significant change for these MSs is the addition of sustainability concerns to the current general management issues addressed during periodic needs assessments and performance improvement cycles.
For those organizations operating with conventional management‐by‐objectives (MBO) systems, the book's CI methods provide an effective SMS model for improving risk management, expense and cost reduction, revenue enhancement, and tangible and intangible competitiveness.
The Book's Approach to Sustainability Program Management
This how‐to book provides a detailed step‐by‐step PDCA‐based process to create a no‐compromise SMS. An SMS links – or, some say, hardwires – an organization's sustainability policy and strategic intentions to its day‐to‐day administration and operational activities. Operationalizing sustainability in any organization involves these foundational management activities:
Formally deciding to create a sustainability program
Developing an overarching sustainability policy
Designing organizational structures and processes to implement the policy
Periodically defining, prioritizing, and shortlisting the organization's most pressing sustainability needs, and then cascading capability creation and performance improvement accountabilities down through the organization
Designing, tracking, and evaluating projects and other initiatives to achieve those accountabilities with measurable benefits that exceed costs, and
Using lessons learned to continually improve the sustainability program.
Critically, the book addresses an organizational transformation issue that many, if not most, technical practitioners and organizational leaders need to address better: formal change management. Experienced change agents know that the root causes of underperformance and failure of many initiatives are inadequate planning and irresolute execution. This is especially true for complex, comprehensive sustainability programs. Aspiring change agents can familiarize themselves with the information in Appendix B, Essential Change Management Concepts.
The Authors' Qualifications
The authors have helped private‐ and public‐sector organizations of all sizes throughout the United States and abroad for over four decades. They are sustainability pioneers who have spent much of their technical and management careers using methodical CI processes to solve intractable problems and create benchmark MSs. Further, they have developed innovative curricula and taught and mentored hundreds of students and professionals in systematic performance improvement and sustainability principles and practices. They have also published on sustainability, environmental, health and safety, quality, engineering, security, and business excellence topics. In addition to speaking at numerous conferences and other forums throughout the United States and abroad, they founded and led a nonprofit dedicated to sustainability education for private‐ and public‐sector organizations in southern California. Though never seeking them, the authors and the organizations they represented have received numerous awards, distinctions, and recognitions. The author's biographies are included at the end of the book.
Acknowledgments
We extend our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to this book.
Special thanks go to John Milliman, PhD, Aisha Cissna‐Cervantes, Kirsten Anderson, Salem Afeworki, Oumaima ben Amor, and Cheryl McCorkle, who generously donated their time and efforts to produce clear‐eyed reviews of early drafts. They provided much‐needed perspectives on the needs of Gen Z to Baby Boom readers and aspiring‐to‐seasoned sustainability and management professionals.
We are incredibly grateful for all our friends and colleagues who have been enthusiastic supporters. Although there are so many to name, we would be remiss if we didn't include our long‐time colleagues and supporters, without whose encouragement this book would not have been written: Ozzie Paez, Stephen Evanoff, Al Hurt, Michael Mutnan, Laura Ann Hopeman, Paolo Espaldon, Peter Burgess, and Federico Fioretto … all experts in their fields.
We also wish to recognize our past colleagues, clients, and students who, for over four decades, shaped our experiences and views on sustainability and its environmental, social, health and safety, quality, and business excellence topics. Your work, whether at ISONetwork, General Dynamics, ADAC Laboratories, USMC Base Camp Pendleton, Renown Health, or Cuyamaca and MiraCosta Community Colleges, has had a profound impact. Who knew the effect our ahead‐of‐their‐time efforts would have? Working with you made us better, which made this book better.
Most of all, we thank our ever‐patient and supportive wives, Pearl Grosskopf and Rosalind Borges. We promise we will get back to our other chores … honestly!
Acronyms
3P
People, Planet, and Profit
3R
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
5W's & 1H
What, Why, Who, Where, When, and How
ASTM
American Society for Testing and Materials
B2B
Business to Business
BCEE
Board Certified Environmental Engineer
BSCE
Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering
CERES
Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies
CEO
Chief Executive Officer
CFO
Chief Financial Officer
CI
Continuous Improvement
CM
Change Management
CSDDD
European Union Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive
CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility
CxO
Any Type of Chief Corporate Officer
EMS
Environmental Management System
ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning
ESG
Environmental, Social, and Governance
FMEA
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
GD
General Dynamics Corporation
GRI
Global Reporting Initiative
H&Q
Hambrecht and Quist Investment Bank
IFRS
International Financial Reporting Standards
IPO
Initial Public Offering
ISSB
International Sustainability Standards Board
ISO
International Organization for Standardization
KISS
Keep It Simple, Stupid
KPI
Key Performance Indicator
KT
Knowledge Transfer
LCA
Life Cycle Assessment
MBA
Master of Business Administration
MBO
Management by Objectives
MDC
Monitor Detect Correct
MS
Management System
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NGO
Nongovernmental Organization
OD
Organizational Development
OFI
Opportunity for Improvement
PDCA
Plan‐Do‐Check‐Act
PM
Project Management
R&QA
NASA's Reliability and Quality Assurance Office
RBA
Responsible Business Alliance
RCA
Root Cause Analysis
ROI
Return on Investment
SASB
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
SEC
Securities and Exchange Commission
SMART
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time‐Constrained
SME
Small‐ and Medium‐Size Enterprises
SMS
Sustainability Management System
SST
Sustainability Specialty Team
STEM
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
SWOT
Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat Analysis
T&D
Training and Development
TANSTAAFL
There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
TQM
Total Quality Management
WBS
Work Breakdown Structure
WIIFM
What's in It for Me?
UNSDG
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
1Introduction
There are many ways to define sustainability. One of the most elegantly simple ones is the United Nations' 1987 Brundtland Commission's definition wherein the global perspective of sustainable development is:
Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Of course, the definition's elegance conceals the complex difficulties in applying high‐level sustainability concepts to an individual organization's specific activities. In organizational management terms, it can be defined this way:
Throughout a product or service's entire closed‐loop life cycle, sustainability is how an organization creates value by maximizing its activities' positive social, environmental, and economic effects while eliminating or minimizing their adverse effects.
It has taken decades for innovators and early adopters to develop efficient technical and management methods to achieve sustainability goals. Building on these efforts, this book provides organizations of various types and sizes with a practical design, implementation, and management model for a continuous improvement (CI) SMS.
SMSs focused on measurable 3P performance are one of sustainability's most innovative and effective best management practices. The authors are enthusiastic advocates of the SMS concept, having successfully initiated, designed, implemented, and managed such systems throughout their careers. With this experience, they have incorporated innovators' and early adopters' methods and success factors – along with their own – into this book's ever‐evolving model. To share this aggregated knowledge and experience, the book prescribes:
An adaptable stepwise model to create an organization‐wide, continuous‐improvement management system to achieve sustainability goals with the least cost, effort, and risk.
The origins and evolution of the book's SMS model are described in Appendix A.
1.1 SMS Best Management Concepts
Despite the growing awareness of climate change, widespread environmental degradation, resource depletion, supply chain disruptions, and social ills over the past half‐century, it has taken this long for a relatively few organizations to develop effective best management practices to systematically identify, prioritize, and act on their most pressing 3P needs with the least cost, effort, and risk. With innovators and early adopters providing promising solutions, it is time to share with – and encourage their widespread adoption by – other private and public organizations.
Recognizing that these best management concepts were developed in the private sector over years of trial and error is essential. Because its activities collectively and directly cause the most consequential environmental and social impacts – good and bad – the private sector must, out of necessity, lead the transition to a more sustainable economy. Unlike public and nonprofit sectors, it has the resources, expertise, and motivation at micro‐ and macroeconomic scales required for rapid transformational change via the profit motive.
Integral best management practices in SMSs include:
Policy‐initiated mandates implemented through needs‐assessed sustainability strategies, tactics, and initiatives cascaded throughout organizations using work processes based on the PDCA cycle, and
High degrees of proactivity, collaboration, and transparency.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.
Dr. Seuss/T.S. Geisel
The Lorax
The second point cannot be overstated. The causes of climate change and other environmental and social impacts are so broad and complex that they defy simple in‐house solutions. As a result, proactive private sector organizations have learned and now promote the idea that individual organizations cannot go it alone in becoming sustainable. They must collaborate on this transformation with all other economic, social, technical, and government sectors.
1.2 Target Readers
The target readers for this book are:
Private sector board members, chief corporate officers, and other executives and managers, along with elected officials and executive directors at public sector and nonprofit organizations
Sustainability champions and supporters at all organizational levels
Technical and management professionals with responsibilities such as sustainability, environment, health and safety, and corporate social responsibility, and
College and university educators, training‐and‐development professionals, and their students.
At its most elemental level, this book is an organizational development (OD) handbook written to help sustainability change agents in their transformation efforts, whatever their title and position. Who is a change agent?
A change agent is a person who, by personal commitment or formal assignment, takes on the role of leader to champion the initiation, design, implementation, and successful management of a transformational idea.
Further, this book can guide those persons throughout an organization who support change agents in their efforts. Such widespread involvement and support are essential to achieving an organization's sustainability intentions.
Readers are assumed to be familiar with basic organizational management concepts and current sustainability issues. However, it is recognized that this will not always be the case, especially for technically oriented sustainability professionals early in their careers and managers and business specialists who focus exclusively on conventional organizational performance. The most rudimentary management concepts are often unfamiliar to many technical professionals. After all, when could they attend formal management courses during their technically packed academic schedules? Likewise, organizational leaders and personnel for whom sustainability is still an ill‐defined esoteric concept have a comparable problem. When could they take additional physical, biological, or social science courses in their administration or operations specialty curricula?
This book does not attempt to address these education shortcomings. However, to help readers needing to broaden and deepen their knowledge and skill sets, Appendix C, Sustainability Learning and Information Resources, provides lists of sustainability‐themed masters of business administration degree programs, professional certificate and accreditation programs, specialty short courses, and other resources.
1.3 The Book's Objectives
Companies must prepare for and actively participate in the rapid evolution of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability laws, regulations, directives, and standards. To this end, the book seeks to guide aspiring and current sustainability leaders in any organization in developing an SMS tailored to its unique needs. Its focus is the systematic – and systemic – application of sustainability principles and practices in any organization. The book's objectives are to:
Define sustainability in terms of its organizational performance benefits
Examine requisite management and technical principles and practices
Prescribe a highly adaptable, stepwise process for the design, implementation, control, and improvement of a practical SMS that is fully integrated into an organization‐wide MS
Offer examples of exemplary sustainability programs, publications, and university‐ and practitioner‐level curricula, and
Stress urgency in producing measurable sustainability results throughout value chains and other stakeholder communities.
1.4 The Need for This Book
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
Tom Peters
As mentioned in the Preface, although an increasing number of private and public sector organizations have embraced sustainability over the past few decades, large‐scale progress has been limited, piecemeal, and too often restricted to environmental issues. There are several reasons that current efforts are less widespread and effective:
Despite the successes of innovators and early adopters, sustainability has not yet matured into a universally accepted body of management principles and practices that can be readily implemented within various organization types, sizes, and locations
With their typical emphasis on technical disciplines and academic research, educational institutions are not keeping up with the rapid evolution in sustainability's organizational transformation practices
There is an overreliance on topic‐limited performance standards that do not comprehensively address sustainability across its full 3P spectrum
There are powerful industry, financial, and political forces working to thwart sustainability's widespread adoption, and
Advocates and various media have been less than effective in communicating the benefits of sustainability.
Many leaders fail to understand sustainability's potential to improve all aspects of organizational performance throughout a value chain, especially in the areas of:
Reduced risks
Reduced costs and expenses, especially those associated with energy consumption and waste generation
Increased revenues through product and service innovation, and
Enhanced tangible and intangible competitive advantages through transparency.
1.4.1 Helping Leaders Embrace Sustainability
Resolving the problem listed earlier – i.e. effectively communicating sustainability's benefits – is challenging because it requires helping reluctant and recalcitrant leaders understand that sustainability is not a burden – it is the opposite, a benefit – when treated as an advanced approach to overall performance improvement. As such, it provides organizations with new management insights and methods for adding and creating value throughout the life cycles of their product and service value chains.
Fortunately, there are now enough examples of positive sustainability programs – as well as ESG reporting pressures from the financial and government sectors – that many laggard leaders realize they are falling behind their competitors in domestic and international markets. This book's prescriptions may be the best path forward for them.
1.4.2 The Business‐as‐Usual Problem
The largest room in the world is the room for improvement.
Helmut Schmidt
However, despite clear evidence that fundamental change is required, business‐as‐usual remains the norm for many organizations. Business‐as‐usual blinds leaders to opportunities to grow organizations in new, sustainable ways. Further, business‐as‐usual creates unnecessary sustainability‐related risks to organizational performance due to rapidly changing environmental, social, economic, and regulatory conditions.
1.4.3 Change is Coming Ready or Not
The evolving ESG discipline originated as a financial concept intended to protect investors, address stakeholder sustainability concerns, and quantify sustainability impacts and risks. Rapidly changing regulatory conditions are crucial concerns for companies operating in the European Union, where sustainability reporting requirements have been introduced and are quickly evolving. Further, for large domestic publicly traded companies that have yet to report on sustainability performance voluntarily, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has now mandated it. The new requirements include reporting sustainability‐related corporate goals and how those goals will be achieved. Such game‐changing reporting requirements will be the tail that wags the dog for companies needing to adopt structured approaches for creating and completing successful sustainability initiatives. As a result, business‐as‐usual days may be over for these companies. Fortunately, though, this book provides an OD pathway to:
Business as unusual.
1.4.4 Stumbling Blocks in the Way of Creating a Sustainable Organization
The big question for leaders assuming responsibility for creating a sustainability program remains, though:
How do you do it?
Follow‐on questions inevitably include:
How much will it cost?
And
How long will it take?
Dialogues at conferences and in industry press, discussion groups, blogs, and other media swirling around the creation and management of sustainability programs are fraught with superficial efforts, quick fixes, misdirections, conceptual and buzzword overloads, and – to be blunt – a lot of OD nonsense. Instead of making sense of the racket, many sustainability change agents withdraw to what they know best. In doing so, they understandably approach sustainability impulsively from their narrow perspectives, skill sets, and experiences. These skill sets and experiences are frequently focused on technicalities or inconsequential distractions that have little to do with an organization's most pressing sustainability needs.
Such focuses typically result in ad hoc projects responding to squeaky‐wheel or flavor‐of‐the‐month issues. These projects are not bad in themselves. After all, they may resolve one or more issues and demonstrate that sustainability improves organizational performance. However, depending on the professional background of the person leading such efforts, characteristic problems may arise in their development.
A typical inclination for technical professionals is to jump in and start working on whatever type of project is most familiar, easily accomplished, or budget‐friendly.
The recurring inclination for organizational managers is to do a public relations initiative or a trendy small‐scale cost‐saving project. Regretfully, many of these efforts risk backfiring as ineffectual and costly greenwash, sustainability's cardinal sin.
There is nothing inherently wrong with these quick‐win impulses as long as there is no expectation of transformational change in how an organization conducts business. Such efforts can help build collective confidence that sustainability is good for business.
However, such ready‐FIRE‐aim efforts risk failing to identify and meet the organization's most pressing needs while wasting scarce financial, labor, material, temporal, and tangible and intangible marketplace goodwill resources. It's the kind of shortsighted thinking succinctly expressed in this quote from H. L. Mencken:
For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
1.4.5 The Critical Importance of Sustainability Program Focus
Most importantly, such efforts risk failure to identify and meet the organization's most pressing sustainability needs. As noted earlier, this failure wastes scarce financial, labor, material, and temporal resources while squandering tangible and intangible competitive advantages and opportunities. It is because of this genuine risk that the methods in this book are needed to systematically and systemically:
Formally decide to create a sustainability program
Set an unambiguous sustainability policy
Define, prioritize, and shortlist an organization's most pressing sustainability needs
Meet those shortlisted needs within the organization's resource limits and opportunities with the least cost, effort, and risk, and
Produce significant, measurable benefits that exceed costs.
1.5 How the Book's Approach Differs from Others
This book differs from other approaches with its adaptable step‐by‐step organizational design, implementation, and management process. The major steps are illustrated in Figure 1.1's generalized concept map. Notice that the steps are color‐coded to show how the PDCA elements are related to the individual steps. Because the do and check steps are so intertwined, they are joined together in the figure. The interrelationships between the steps in Figure 1.1 are detailed further in Chapter 2 and Figure 2.4's process map.
The process starts by addressing the all‐important formal
go/no‐go
decision to create a sustainability program. For those organizations with existing loosely defined and controlled sustainability programs, this and subsequent steps need to be addressed retroactively. The crucial go/no‐go decision requires consideration of tangible and intangible environmental, social, and other administrative and operational risks and benefits at the highest levels.
With a
go‐decision
, the process moves on to define an organization's sustainability policies.
Then, the process designs the organization structure and work activities needed to implement the sustainability policies.
The process incorporates the idea that financial
return on investment
(ROI) analyses are an essential starting point, not the end point. Sustainability adds social and environmental considerations to ROI analyses.
From there, the process prescribes how to:
Define and prioritize the organization's most pressing sustainability needs
Set overall time‐limited strategic goals along with specific tactical objectives and targets cascaded into all units, functions, and departments
Design and complete sustainability‐related capability creation and performance improvement initiatives with appropriate ROIs at all organization levels.
Finally, the process improves the SMS structures, procedures, and activities with corrective actions and lessons learned before restarting the PDCA‐based improvement cycle.
Figure 1.1 Generalized Concept Map: The SMS Model.
Source: W. Borges.
1.5.1 An Essential Concept: The PDCA Cycle
Based on the familiar PDCA cycle, an SMS has a distinct starting point, i.e. initial planning. However, cyclical SMSs have no defined end points. This is the PDCA cycle's fundamental strength:
When effectively applied, PDCA continuously and endlessly improves the organization's performance.
1.5.2 An Emphasis on Program Evolution
A key concept in this book is:
Perfect should not get in the way of good enough.
This is because, over time, CI methods derived from the PDCA concept take good enough to the next level by iteratively eradicating work process inefficiencies. Awareness of this concept helps minimize angst among leaders and staff when problems arise during sustainability program development.
1.5.3 An Emphasis on Change Management
Another departure from convention in this book's approach is its emphasis on formal CM principles and practices. Far too many organizations neglect CM at their peril. Ignoring the need to plan or not adequately planning for change is a chief cause of sustainability program underperformance or failure.
Initially, most leaders do not expect a sustainability program to transform how an organization operates. However, that is precisely what sustainability principles and practices have the potential to do through:
New methods to
plan
,
organize
,
control
, and
lead
an organization
Fewer risks, liabilities, and sanctions throughout the life cycles of product and service delivery value chains
Lower administrative expenses and operational costs throughout the life cycles of product and service value chains by eradicating all kinds of waste
Revenue streams enhanced through product and service innovation, and
Enhanced tangible and intangible competitive advantages through transparency.
There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit from the preservation of the old institutions, and merely lukewarm defenders in those who should gain by the new ones.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Although management initiates the change process, transformational change begins at the personal level and then extends to entire organizations. From there, individual organizations influence industries, the public sector, and society. Because of its importance, there are specific discussions about CM issues throughout the book, especially in Chapter 3 and Appendix B.
1.5.4 Emphasis on Adaptability
One of the most important lessons the authors have learned while initiating, designing, implementing, and running technical programs and MSs is:
One size does not fit all.
Regrettably, for every large enterprise with the resources and expertise to build an effective SMS, far too many smaller organizations do not. Irrespective of resource capacities and constraints, this book provides the concepts and methods that organizations of any size can use to produce significant environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and financial results throughout their value chains. Adapting these concepts and techniques will help leaders customize their organization's sustainability program to meet their unique needs.
1.5.5 Emphasis on Integration
Finally, the book's adaptable SMS design, implementation, and management processes enable easy integration into an organization's current overarching MS. Integration is a critically important efficiency tactic to help transform an organization into a greener and more socially responsible enterprise with the least cost, effort, and risk while improving productivity, overall financial performance, and stakeholder satisfaction.
1.6 When Can Measurable Progress Be Expected?
Sustainability and other similarly designed CI MSs often produce dramatic results by significantly reducing risks and other inefficiencies. The Further Reading examples provided throughout the book highlight the successful efforts of early SMS innovators and adopters.
It is essential to recognize that SMSs are strategic initiatives, i.e.:
A means by which an organization translates its goals into practice.
Like most strategic initiatives, SMSs take time to achieve the intended results. There are no shortcuts. An applicable management adage is:
Work impatiently to achieve the intended results, but be patient while waiting for them.
In order to go fast, you must first go slow.
Bob Willard
As strategic initiatives, SMSs are major transformations requiring leadership determination and highly focused CM planning and actions. The approach outlined earlier takes considerable effort and time to complete the initial OD tasks:
Reach a go‐decision
Develop organization‐wide sustainability policies
Create an SMS management framework and associated work processes
Identify and successfully instruct SMS management and technical personnel, and
Conduct needs assessments.
There are four purposes of improvement: easier, better, faster, and cheaper.
Shigeo Shingo
Initial results have typically been slow for innovators and early adopter organizations that have created effective sustainability programs. However, with time and the PDCA cycle concept, the programs have become increasingly effective in producing measurable – and even dramatic – 3P results. Of course, the time required to achieve results will vary by organization. It depends on such factors as:
The nature and urgency of sustainability challenges facing an organization
Leadership determination
Resource availability, and
Efficacy of capability creation, performance improvement, and CM efforts.
Significant, measurable results can be produced early in an SMS's first year of operation. Early quick‐win results to resolve important sustainability issues are encouraged to gain support for the SMS effort. In subsequent operating years, the SMS will become even more capable of producing remarkable results, even breakthrough performance, through its CI processes.
1.7 Notes about Industry Standards and Government Regulations
While determining how best to manage sustainability issues, proactive organizations have adopted and benefited from various industry standards and government regulations. This has provided them with valuable perspectives on integrating sustainability systematically and systemically into the range of conventional organizational management concerns.
The following are some of the more important standards and regulations affecting the design and operation of SMSs.
High‐level standards for sustainability management, including the:
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) and
CERES Principles Code of Corporate Environmental Ideals
.
Voluntary sustainability and financial performance reporting standards, including the:
Carbon Disclosure Project
(CDP)
Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI), and
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
(SASB)
Standards and Integrated Reporting Framework
administered by the
International Financial Reporting Standards
(IFRS)
Foundation's International Sustainability Standards Board
(ISSB).
Basic MS standards and codified performance improvement methods, including the:
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) MS standards, especially
Guidelines for Contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, ISO/UNDP PAS 53002
Social Accountability International
SA8000 Social Certification Standard
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
, and
Process‐oriented methodologies, including
Lean Manufacturing
,
Six Sigma
, and
Total Quality Management
(TQM).
Various industry standards, such as the:
Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) Code of Conduct
Marine Stewardship Council's Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fishing
Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higg Index
, and
ASTM International's
and
ISO's
industry‐specific technical standards.
Individual organizations have also set standards for their suppliers, such as the
Walmart Sustainability Index
. The Index enables the company's buyers to evaluate supplier sustainability performance across the closed‐loop life cycles of their products and services.
