Companies in Africa provide great example for sustainability

 

In regions such as Africa, where public services are missing or of low standards, companies have learned how to make sustainability a responsibility of their employees and create greater business value in the process. Ivey professor Mike Valente feels their success sets a good example for North American companies to follow.

Valente studies how companies build sustainability into their corporate strategies. Much of his research has taken place in sub-Saharan Africa where firms are finding innovative ways to solve these issues.
 
“Sustainability is critical in these countries,” Valente says. “Because of gaps in government, there tends to be blurring between the private and public sectors. Companies are often forced to reconcile voids in public welfare, and that sometimes means incorporating sustainability into their operations.”
 
African companies are able to build sustainability into their business models through dialogue with their stakeholders. In Western companies, there still tends to be an “us versus them” approach to stakeholder engagement says Valente. In Africa, it is a much more collaborative approach. As he points out: “One of the key findings of my research is that different actors who might typically be at odds with one another are collectively implementing the business model for sustainability.”
 
Valente also found that firms in developing countries come up with creative ways to make sustainability a source of value creation. “The more that sustainability represented a differentiating factor from competitors,” he says, “the more incentive there was to build it into the core business.”
 
Details of the research were released in the January edition of Impact, an online monthly publication featuring research from faculty at the Richard Ivey School of Business. To read the full article, click here.
 
Ken Hardy, Professor Emeritus, Marketing, also discusses how his new course, Learning From Leaders, helps next-generation leaders develop critical leadership skills. For the full article and a 6-minute video interview, click here.