The Triple Bottom Line Blog

If you keep tabs on media coverage of the environment, you may have heard about the recent about-face at The New Republic regarding its new blog focusing on energy and the environment. When the blog was first launched a week and a half ago, it bore the logo and message, "Powered by BP," representing sponsorship by the somewhat controversial UK oil company. It was the only portion of the magazine's website to bear such a logo (though advertising not linked to any particular magazine feature does appear elsewhere on the site).

Readers protested, the blog's chief writer wrote a post explaining his own discomfort with the sponsorship, and within hours the other shoe dropped. The following note appeared on the blog:

You may notice that this blog looks a little different. The phrase "powered by BP," which appeared in the banner when we launched yesterday, led to some (justifiable) confusion about the blog's relationship with BP. But TNR's agreement with BP was and is purely an advertising deal, and the company never had any say in our editorial content. Today, the TNR business staff and BP decided to remove their logo placement to make sure that relationship is clear.

It's an interesting story that illustrates yet again the great and growing power of grassroots stakeholders--in this case, the readers of The New Republic--to force companies to back down from policies or practices of which they don't approve.

What I find most interesting, however, is the reason those readers objected to the BP sponsorship. It wasn't, apparently, any fear that BP would be dictating or influencing the content of the blog. Writer Bradford Plumer had addressed this issue in his post expressing concerns about the relationship, titled with disarming frankness, "Are We in the Tank?" His answer, obviously, was no--and judging by the comments he received, most readers accepted it.

No, what bothered the readers was the possible impact of the sponsorship on BP itself. As a commenter known as Nippers wrote:

The danger for T[he] N[ew] R[epublic] is not so much that BP will influence its writers as that TNR will lend BP integrity and eco-cred. Running BP ads would be one thing. But pinning that little petrochemical boutonniere to the web site's lapel--well, it's a mistake the magazine would do well to reconsider.

In other words, readers of The New Republic for whom the magazine's reputation is important were upset with the idea that that reputation would provide a little borrowed luster to an oil company.

Imagine--a group of customers who care more about the halo effect of the company's reputation than the company itself does! And one that pays close enough attention to the behavior of firms in other industries (like energy) to consider itself capable of judging which companies are and are not suitable business associates for a magazine they respect.

Now that's what you call an active, involved set of stakeholders. The New Republic did the right thing by reversing the sponsorship plan so quickly. If you're lucky enough to attract customers who care that much about what you do, you'd better treat them with respect--as the business partners they are.

Labels: BP, Communications and Marketing, New Republic

A recent article in ScienceAlert argued very persuasively that CSR should not be simply a communications function, but should be “be seen as an embodiment of the organisation’s culture and values and be embedded in all operations.” Quite true.

In my experience, however, it is very difficult to add a CSR perspective to a large corporation. Not impossible, of course, but extremely difficult. If you’ve ever been involved in such an effort, I suspect you know what I mean – and it would be interesting to see your thoughts in comments below.

All too often, once a CEO or management team has taken the significant step of realizing that it is in the company’s interests to focus on environmental and social impacts, the temptation is to “add on” a CSR competency. This might take the form of hiring a CSR manager, writing up a CSR strategy, devoting funds to CSR activities, and so on. All of them good and necessary steps – but insufficient for the real task at hand: the integration of a sustainability mindset into all of the company’s normal operations.

Sounds simple, right? Just remember to integrate CSR into business operations, and voila! You’re all set! Not so. Here are some common problems companies can face:

• Denial – if you’ve been working for a company very long, as have many key decision-makers at any firm, you’ve probably come to see what you do as right and just. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t be doing it, would you? But there’s a concept you might remember from Psych 101 called “cognitive dissonance” and it says, essentially, that people abhor contradictions. If they run across one, they find a way to get rid of it. Someone who thinks, I am a good person, and yet acts unethically, will resolve that disconnect somehow – if not by changing their actions than by changing their perception of those actions.
  
  In the corporate world, we often feel we don’t have a choice about certain decisions; over the long run, it is easy to start assuming they are right, because if we questioned our impact on the world every day, it might be hard to live with ourselves. As a result, many experienced managers find it extremely difficult to look objectively at what they’ve been doing for the past 20 years, and ask themselves if they’ve been having a negative impact on the world. Asking them to do so goes against our very nature, and puts them in a tough spot both professionally and emotionally.
• Dispersed responsibility – Let’s say that everyone in a given company has been sufficiently convinced that CSR needs to become a higher priority. Now, a common trap is: Great idea, but it’s not my job. In other words, it’s difficult for managers and employees to see the relevance of a new CSR focus on their own day-to-day decision making.

For example, those who source contractors still look at the same list of criteria, price being primary; those who design marketing materials still have the same single goal of selling more stuff; those who hire new employees are still buried so deep under a pile of applications without the time, never mind the authority, to work on making current employees happier.

Somehow, each and every one of these people needs to accept that CSR is his or her job, and to think about how that relates to his or her specific job description. Employees should become better able to recognize their impact, and be empowered (and budgeted!) to make socially-responsible decisions.

• Core activities – if your basic business model is to blame for a less-than-stellar footprint, and if you’ve managed to admit this to yourself, what to do next? Some companies have managed to reinvent themselves.

For example, BP re-branded itself as “Beyond Petroleum” and has begun investing in clean energy technology. Landfill companies have begun to re-shape themselves as waste-management companies, with an emphasis on waste reduction and recycling. International Paper has taken on major forestry initiatives, creating biodiverse ecosystems that recreational users help maintain.

The important thing is to see whatever problems your industry has as an opportunity to do better, and to carve out a role in solving those problems – by providing cleaner energy, less waste, more trees, and so on.

These are only a few of the stumbling blocks I’ve noticed on the path to sustainability; I’m certain there are more. But keep in mind, not every company faces them equally:

• Some firms, especially in recent years, began their existence with a triple-bottom-line focus, and built that into every process from the ground up.
• Other firms are small, or closely held, and can therefore change themselves more quickly than their larger and publicly-held counterparts.
• Still others have been motivated by a reputational crisis, which can act as a blessing in disguise by breaking through denial and opening the coffers – helping, in the end, to focus a significant amount of energy on making things right.

So if your firm finds it difficult to push sustainability into every nook and cranny of your operations, just keep this in mind: it may be a Herculean effort for you, but it may be much easier for some of your competitors. As survey after survey tells us, sustainability is a growth industry right now, and you’ll want to be out ahead of the curve.

Labels: BP, International Paper, Management and Organization

Over at Treehugger, another website that is worth a regular visit (and which we hear tell is the most-visited sustainability site in the blogosphere), we read a Chicago Tribune story about an ongoing environmental controversy roiling the Windy City. At its heart is a plan by BP to increase dumping of ammonia and suspended solids into Lake Michigan as part of a big refinery expansion program.

Now Mayor Daley, the regional office of EPA, and a collection of activists have pressured/shamed BP into backing away from its plan and sitting down at the negotiating table to work out an alternative, hopefully using new technologies that reduce the pollutants more effectively.

Perhaps the most interesting--and certainly the most telling--quotation from the article is this one:

"The environment is a prominent part of BP's advertising," said Sadhu Johnston, Daley's deputy chief of staff for environmental initiatives. "We're sure they can make it a prominent part of their actions too."

Notice what is happening here: The press and the political powers-that-be are holding BP to a higher environmental standard precisely because of the company's past public professions of commitment to environmental stewardship. If the current debate involved, say, ExxonMobil, neither the mayor's chief of staff nor the Chicago Tribune could use the company's own words against them--because Exxon has never tried to promote itself as a "green" energy company. An accusation of hypocrisy, which could hit home against BP, would seem irrelevant when aimed at another company.

On the one hand, this might seem unfair, as if BP is being "punished" for its reputation as a relative "good guy" in the universe of Big Oil. But from a broader perspective, being held accountable for its environmental promises is probably a good thing for BP--provided they were sincere about those promises in the first place. What BP is now doing (admittedly under pressure) is the essence of stakeholder engagement: meeting with all the relevant, concerned parties to develop a program that will meet everyone's long-term needs, including those of BP and its stockholders.

Running ads like BP's declaring yourself the "beyond petroleum" company dedicated to eco-friendly energy solutions is a little like standing up at a holiday party and announcing your intention to go on a diet and lose forty pounds in front of all your family and friends. You'd better not say it unless you really mean it. Because if you don't mean it, you're going to feel mighty foolish a week later when your sister or your best friend catches you scarfing down a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

ADDENDUM: If you're interested in more detail on the BP/Lake Michigan saga, here is a good story from the online Columbia Journalism Review summarizing both the unfolding controversy and the well-crafted coverage it has received from the city's two main newspapers.

Labels: BP, Chicago, ExxonMobil, Role of Government, Waste, Water