MIT Sloan Management Review

sustainability executive can focus more on “game changing” opportunities. At Owens Corning, a transition to a new CEO in 2007 did not alter the company’s commitment to sustainability. Rather, the new CEO, Michael Thaman, increased the company’s focus on energy efficiency, renewables and environmentally responsible manufacturing as key to growth. That consistent leadership from the top has allowed sustainability to continue evolving at Owens Corning. Consider how the company has been leveraging the beginnings of radical transparency in its industry by conducting life cycle analyses of its products, seeking third-party certifications and verifications of its claims, and working to influence standards-setting bodies. One of those standards is the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) verification and certification program for “green” homes. Among other offerings, the program provides builders with online verification of products that have received third-party certification. Owens Corning’s insulation products were the first to make the list, and they appear first when builders click on the website’s drop-down menu.

That easy availability of information has become a competitive advantage that should not be underestimated. Builders that want to adhere to green standards can readily determine that Owens Corning products have the necessary third-party certifications. If they are considering using a competitor’s products that lack certification, they must go through the time-consuming process of proving to the NAHB that those products meet green standards. “Having the right products is an important first step” says O’Brien-Bernini, “then making your products easy to specify elevates your competitive edge.” But the point here is not that information transparency is a serendipitous benefit that can result from a sustainability initiative. Rather, transparency is what will pull companies along the journey through every phase more swiftly than regulations can push them.

THIS BRINGS US BACK to the mall, where the three teen-aged girls have just purchased another brand of sunscreen at a different store. One is now texting her friends, another is sending a message on Twitter and posting a note on her Facebook page, while the third is logging a comment on Digg. Maybe it’s something about the cool new brand of sunscreen

they’ve found; or perhaps it’s about their disgust at the product they abandoned. With social networking, radical transparency will go viral, vastly multiplying its impact in the marketplace.

So, to paraphrase the novelist William Gibson, the future is already here; it’s just not distributed evenly yet. Today, young consumers like these teenagers are buying products, intuitively using an emerging set of tools. Already, those among them who know the most about social responsibility issues are so eager to work for companies that embrace their values that they are willing to take a significant pay cut. 1 And while they’re buying products today, they will be running businesses tomorrow. In the meantime, companies that want be around when this happens must find leaders with the right competencies to build a bridge to the future.

Christoph Lueneburger leads the Sustainability Practice at Egon Zehnder International, a privately held executive search and human capital assessment firm. Daniel Goleman is an author, psychologist and science journalist. He has written a number of books, including Ecological Intelligence (Basic Books, 2009) and Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1995). Comment on this article or contact the authors at smrfeedback@mit.edu.

REFERENCES

1. A 2008 white paper reporting the survey by David Montgomery and Catherine Ramus of UC Santa Barbara, “Calibrating MBA Job Preferences,” examines the trade-offs students are willing to make when selecting a potential employer. Based on the responses of 759 graduating MBAs at 11 top business schools, future business leaders rank corporate social responsibility high on their list of values, and they are willing to sacrifice a significant part of their salaries to find an employer with values aligned with their own. The researchers found that the students expected to earn an average of $103,650 a year at their first job. Nearly all (97.3%) said they would be willing to make a financial sacrifice to work for a company that exhibited four characteristics of social responsibility: caring about employees, caring for stakeholders (such as community residents), environmental sustainability and ethical business conduct. These students said they would sacrifice an average of $14,902 a year, or 14.4% of their expected salary. i. While we found team leadership to be important throughout all three phases, it was not an abnormally strong competence in sustainability executives compared with other leaders with similar tenures and responsibilities.