In the article "Going Green's Unexpected Advantage" G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón discuss the advantages for leaders to make their employees and business go green. They argue that the green approach makes a key driver of innovation and carries a huge competitive advantage. The main arguments G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón point out are "It makes no sense to sail against the wind", "It can save you a lot of money" and "It's not that hard to apply a green lens".
My first thought was: does this caunt as ethical leadership on today´s society? Go green seems to be a good way for a leader to be ethical and take public responsible, but none of the arguments talk about some good for the environment. Only to act as you do something good for the society. The last argument (“not that hard to apply a green lens”) mainly suggest that you don´t need to do a big difference to be classified as green. That means that the green stamp is something meaningless that doesn´t make any difference.
In this view, the green approach seems to be more a competitive advantage for the business than cause of corporate social responsibility. What do you think? Can the green aproach do more harm than good?
Article: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/dec2010/ca20101220_742780.htm
Posted by: Eva-Lena Juhlin
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you're argument that "not that hard to apply a green lens," is suggesting corporations only need to do little in order to be reflected in a better light. I think that companies should go green in order to benefit the environment, not because they think it will benefit their company in profits because the consumers believe they are doing "better" for society.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the green approach should be the basis of corporate social responsibility but because of it's popularity, corporations are turning to green because they think it will benefit their company, not the environment. I also believe that doing any green will somewhat help the environment but at the same time I believe that companies should be doing more than they are for the right reasons.
-Lauren Mowers
I agree that the green approach should be the basis of corporate social responsibility and not because of it's popularity.
ReplyDeleteSomething I wonder is if it is better to have more strict rules for companies to use the green approach? Or is better that the CEOs of the companies aiming to be green (even if the reason is popularity) and in total the environment get a little bit better?
- Eva-Lena Juhlin
I think going green is both a competitive advantage as well as a corporate social responsibility. There is no doubt that by going green you are setting yourself apart from other companies. I agree with Lauren when she said corporations are turning to going green more in order to benefit their company than helping the environment. It is important, but yet extremely hard, to determine a companies real motivation of going green.
ReplyDeleteThe last post was posted by Kelly Moran
ReplyDelete