Who Manages Climate Change In Your Company?
Should anybody be in charge of “climate change” in a business? I personally think it is a ridiculous question which, in a strange way, is supported by McKinsey’s executive climate change survey:
“There’s no consensus: about equal percentages of respondents apportion the responsibility for ensuring that their companies consider climate change to C-level executives, corporate-level strategists, and business unit or functional managers. Notably, while these findings broadly hold across industries, executives in the high-tech and energy industries are more likely than average to say that climate change responsibilities reside with C-level executives.”
Is the lack of consensus because climate change really doesn’t require action right now? Or, as I feel, is it because the question doesn’t make sense? i.e., too vague without specifics. The survey made a point of saying, not surprisingly, that most believe that climate change is important while at the same time most take very little action to deal with it.
Hopefully, McKinsey will use the “results” of this survey to jump start a project to define climate change in a more realistic way for companies to act on.
Should McKinsey’s role be more of a leader on defining how climate change can impact an organization? Does the survey reveal an opportunity for McKinsey to help companies deal with climate change? What do you think the real purpose of the survey was?
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2 opinions for Who Manages Climate Change In Your Company?
Thursday
Mar 28, 2008 at 10:47 am
It seems almost like most companies moving towards any sort of socially responsibility aren’t necessarily doing it because of top-down action. Instead, it feels like there’s usually one or two people driving the effort (who hopefully are high enough in the hierarchy to get things done). In companies without passionate people, there’s no interest in change.
Bob Turek
Mar 28, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Thursday- I think most companies are motivated by revenue, cost cutting and profits. Doing the “right” thing within those motivations can take place. My take on this is that “climate change” is not yet specific enough, or defined enough, for businesses to get their arms around it and manage it. The free market, if left to operate, can work because it’s all about pleasing the customers who create the demand. For example, if enough customers somehow link climate change to a company’s products, and then buy, or not buy, based on that, companies will change. But you can see from my statement that there is just not enough specificity or clarity in the demand/supply process yet. One recent “climate” related example is consideration or plastic bag bans by cities. Some have argued that using paper bags actually creates more environmental damage (creation pollutants higher, landfill space up to 10 times higher, etc.) and that the real problem is people littering and not reusing the plastic bags. Do you have other examples of more specific “climate change/environmental” issues that companies can deal with?
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