I chose Thunderbird for my MBA largely because I knew that it was ahead of the game on two megatrends: globalization and sustainability. As a student, I found that the school delivered, preparing me for a career to take on these issues and the broad, difficult managerial decision making needed for research and innovation in sustainability consulting.
Since finishing in 2007 and then starting with BSR, I have learned a lot more about how those topics interact. Global management is essential for leading on sustainability because value chains go across cultures, and so engaging suppliers effectively calls for a softer hand than just demanding compliance. Also, starting with a global framework is essential for understanding the world’s myriad regulatory environments and consumer markets, in order to translate what’s coming to your company, and to know where to lead.
This week I am representing BSR at the “COP15” climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and here I find that these themes have never been truer. Ultimately, an effective global climate deal that’s good for business and the world will require a balance between asking the countries which have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases (industrialized countries, led by the U.S.) to change the most, versus those expected to emit a much larger amount in the future (developing countries, led by China). In reality, this is not an objective question, but a highly charged emotional one which raises deeper questions about equity and values, which are in turn based on enormously varied essential assumptions across cultures.
Such vexing cross-cultural problems are also found in the details. Currently, a chief barrier to a global climate deal looks to be China agreeing to its emissions being independently monitored and verified. The country is reticent to leave inspection to outsiders—it says out of principle—yet assurance of environmental effectiveness is needed globally. This need for robust auditing highlights a major challenge that is especially thorny when done across cultures like between the China and the U.S., where there are different tastes for ceremony, relationships, and formality when important issues are at stake.
If you want to do more on sustainability, you are in the right place at Thunderbird. Within its community, you have an opportunity to be at the forefront global management of the most difficult questions we face–and decisions companies address today about how to engage policymakers in order to best incentivize a more profitable and durable future for companies.
Originally published at Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Ryan Schuchard 