Corporate Sustainability pt 2: The individual

In what can likely described as a landmark case in UK discrimination law, Tim Nicholson has successfully won an appeal against being fired on his views about climate change.

Tim and his lawyer, Shah Qureshi appeared on the Law Report recently in what was a fascinating conversation into the fringes of discrimination law definitions.

Tim Nicholson: Mine is not a faith-based or a spiritual-based belief, it is grounded in the overwhelming scientific evidence and it's the combination of that scientific evidence with the moral and ethical imperatives to do something about it, that is distinct from a religion.

Shah Qureshi: Tom was the head of sustainability at one of the largest property development companies in the UK, Grainger PLC, and he's employed to help them with their environmental policy on such issues as climate change, and he's a person who takes a political stance on the environment and climate change, and leads his life according to those principles. And what's happened is that he raised a number of issues for example, an issue about the chief executive flying someone out to take his Blackberry to him in Ireland because he'd forgotten it, and he raised issues about carbon footprints, gas-guzzling cars and that sort of thing. He says as a result of that he was pushed out. The company say that he was made redundant, and he issued proceedings in the Employment Tribunal in the UK, and one of the things that he raised was that he'd been discriminated against on the basis of his religion or belief and there are regulations making that unlawful. And he's just won a case in the Appeals stage, confirming that his views are covered by the UK discrimination law. (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2009/2748370.htm#transcript)

Does this open the floodgates and should recruiters run for the hills when a climate change activist sends in a resume? I think not. Tim still needed to pass a number of legal tests to get to where he is now. Firstly he had to show that his beliefs in climate change were a key part in shaping his life - essentially it was not a simple opinion but a heat felt belief. Tim would rarely travel by car, refuse to fly, eco-renovated his home and eats locally farmed produce.

Secondly it needs to be proved that Tim was dismissed because of his views; and that if he was dismissed for his views that they were not interfering with his ability to carry out the inherent requirements of the job. Seeing as Tim was head of sustainability it would be highly unlikely that being a climate change activist would be detrimental to his job.

The company claims Tim was made redundant as his role could be covered through his duties being subsumed within other posts. Either way watch this space as it may very well have implications for Australian HR professionals, especially since climate change is a hot topic here to say for the next few decades at least.

For more information, a good place to start is the actual Law Report interview, broadcast 24th November 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2009/2748370.htm#transcript

Corporate Sustainability

In light of the Daily Telegraph's three part series into climate change and Copenhagen upon us I thought it could be fun to kick things off with a look into corporate sustainability; ethics and change management.

Sustainability often conjures up the theme of sacrifice. Something must be sacrificed for the greater good. The irony that Tony Fry mentions is that what we are ultimately trying to sustain is unsustainable, that is sustaining our current lifestyles.

We're at a watershed. The future of humanity as we understand it is really before a choice which says do we change direction or do we try to maintain what we already have?

Now the question in terms of sustainability and sustainable development, to a large extent kind of reduces to the proposition of sustaining what we already have, sustaining in a sense, the unsustainable. (Fry, T. Innovation Cities, radio broadcast, Future Tense, ABC Radio National, Sydney, 20th August. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2009/2656432.htm) 

I wont go into the technicalities of climate change as this is not a science blog, however the concept of sacrificing on altruistic terms is an interesting one when viewed in the light of capitalist organisations. Sacrificing on monetary terms is easy to comprehend and essentially easier to justify as there is no personal value attached to a dollar or number. What about sacrificing values however?


In my final year of university I investigated big for profits partnering with Environmental NGO's looking at both the possibilities and complications arising from such a event. I came across a successful partnership between Greenpeace and npower. To the open disapproval of the World Wildlife Fund, npower's father company, RWE dealt with coal and nuclear power. Regardless of this Greenpeace went ahead and developed windfarms with npower. The result was a green customer base which grew from 5,000 to 50,000 in 5 years. (Webb, T. 2005, Does it pay to get into bed with business?, The Guardian, Viewed 1st October 2009, http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/-news-by-category-mainmenu-9/173-pr-industry/724-does-it-pay-to-get-into-bed-with-business)


Essentially the conclusion I came to was this:

...Environmental NGO’s may need to lower their ethical standards and step of their high horse in order to actually drive change in the corporations their targeting. What this ultimately means is associations and partnerships with the processes, products and models in big business that initially go against the NGO’s standards of practice. However the partnership itself is used to place the NGO in the strategic position to drive real change, internally as opposed to relying on external influences. (Braithwaite 2009)

I confess there can be a number of counter arguments to this statement. Firstly it is arguably a utilitarian point of view; the means justifies the end essentially. Secondly, it in a sense oversimplifies the the issue of challenging ethical standards as it suggests the breaking of them to be a black and white issue.  Was Greenpeace really lowering its ethical standards when its end goal was to produce windfarms? For a similar analogy. Is the environmental activist lowering their standards when they have to fly across country to give a keynote address possibly affecting hundreds?


I'll leave you with this food for thought and in my next blog attempt to look at this issue on a more personal level, within the workplace, between people rather than the clash of two organisations.