The sustainability challenge: Cooperating to achieve systemic change
According to an article by Peter M. Senge, Benyamin B. Lichtenstein, Katrin Kaeufer, Hilary Bradbury and John S. Carroll in MIT Sloan Management Review, in the age of globalization, with governments being unable, for a number of reasons, to deal unaided with key sustainability issues and challenges across the globe, businesses have to develop initiatives, collaborate and exercise sustainability leadership.
Despite the difficulties cross-sector collaborative efforts have come across, complex sustainability issues have to be dealt with collaboratively Tweet This! and on a global scale by businesses, to achieve systemic change. Three different, but interrelated, types of work are required:
- Conceptual work: Contextualizing complex issues. Different – yet interdependent – sustainability approaches, tools or frameworks have to be related and integrated. There is a need to:
- collectively develop conceptual frameworks, building community, and
- achieve clarity and simplicity, without oversimplifying complex issues
- Relational work: Open conversation and collaborative investigation. Far-reaching, sincere, reflective dialogue based on trust is required, to promote joint learning, exploration, and action-oriented initiatives.
- Action-driven work: Developing cooperative change initiatives. Feedback from diverse stakeholders has to be collected – a procedure that may require time and effort –, to ensure that effective, cooperative action can be taken for systemic change.
Three key questions
As the need for collaboration between governments, NGOs and businesses to tackle complex sustainability issues and achieve widespread systemic change becomes increasingly evident, three key questions remain to be answered:
- How can the transition from benchmarking to developing learning communities be accomplished?
- What is the proper balance between setting goals and providing space for innovation and reflection?
- What is the correct balance between public and private interest?
References:
This article was compiled using a publication by MIT Sloan Management Review. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the link below: