I want to start this week with a quote about the multinational industrial corporation Alcoa, which in September 2018 was included again in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, a major benchmark of corporate sustainability. The quote itself comes from the book, The Necessary Revolution by Peter Senge and colleagues, and it illustrates the kind of thinking and commitment to sustainability, already being demonstrated by some leading corporations. When Alcoa set their stretch targets for zero process water discharge and zero waste to landfill, they were actually inspired by a development that occurred several years earlier when Paul O'Neill first became CEO. He was reviewing the company's accident and fatality statistics. O'Neill, Atkins, and a few others, were wrestling with whether these kind of accident and fatality targets really make sense. From the time I first joined the company, recalls Atkins, arguments had raged about safety in Alcoa. Some would say, yeah, you need to set safety goals. But you can't set goals that are ridiculous. You can't set a goal of cutting your accident rate by 75% in two years, because people will just ignore it. They'll say that's a bunch of guys sitting in air-conditioned offices in Pittsburgh, coming up with impossible things to do. Others argued that if you don't set stretch goals, people won't really work hard and they'll say, Alcoa doesn't really care if we injure 300 people a year because that's just the way life is. Shortly after O'Neill took office, he recast the debate. Atkins record him saying, I'm of the opinion that zero is the right number. You cannot plan to kill three people a year because you killed four people last year, and you want to get a little better. And you can't plan to have 1,000 people going to medical centers in Alcoa's plants, so the goal is zero. Zero fatalities, zero lost workdays, zero injuries, zero reportable incidents. This kind of commitment to eradicating harms to employees and to the environment is inspiring. My question then is, which mechanisms do businesses use when they're seeking to embed sustainability in their strategies and practices? In many cases the answer is specific and local to the particular business concern. Reducing the use of non-renewable energy or resources, reducing packaging waste, contribution to poverty reduction in the local community, donating used office equipment to schools or products to local women's shelters, etc. There are more general and generalizable mechanisms the businesses are encouraged to undertake, however. In this week, we examine three of the main mechanisms. Organizational ethics programs, corporate social responsibility, and market-based environmentalism. And then acknowledging that not all corporate sustainability strategies come from the kind of proactive and positive position signaled in the Alcoa example. We'll also consider corporate strategic responses that attempt to deny, or mask, or resist the sustainability agenda. Overall, this week will help me to articulate major corporate strategy responses to sustainability, and appreciate the positive contributions that such strategies are making. Also, to understand that not all strategic responses to sustainability are proactive or positive. And to be able to begin to separate out business strategy around sustainability in terms if its offensive, defensive, or denial positioning. [SOUND]
