What if more companies were willing to "stick their necks out"?
I envision a world where all companies are motivated to lead on sustainability issues. Leadership requires vulnerability and transparency. As we saw in class, transparency, and the financial vulnerability associated with it, is often not in a company's self-interest. Volkswagen increased profits by cheating tests, while Unilever and Patagonia's reputations suffered when they were honest.
So, how do we incentivize transparency?
By reducing the vulnerability associated with it.
My proposed intervention is a mindset shift in NGO strategy. Instead of targeting transparent companies, the primary goal of NGOs should be evaluating and ranking actors, with transparency as a key indicator. Once actors are ranked, NGOs would promote the best. Promotion tactics would include endorsements or brand awareness campaigns. Endorsements would be given, even if the company was involved in a "dirty" industry (e.g. oil or mining), to encourage transparency in all sectors.
@CoSphere
This is a super interesting idea Philip! I think your line "reducing the vulnerability associated with [transparency]" is so key.
I'm usually hesitant to simply accept feasibility of a mindset shift, but I think you've laid it out in such a way that it's physical to implement! My only question is, how could NGOs confirm the "transparent" information given out by companies isn't falsified? Like in the case of Volkswagen where their emissions reports were made available, but there was still deceit throughout?
Hey Philip! Love your vision! I share the same one.
More companies definitely need to "Stick their neck out"
I agree with Megan's point that most business decisions are not driven by the NGOs around them–I also think that most NGOs don't exist to police corporate ethics. But reducing the vulnerability associated with transparency would be fantastic. The same way that "made in <insert country here>" tags are mandated, we could begin to introduce legislation forcing supply chain transparency at a much higher level. Though Canada doesn't have much global sway and thus those laws implemented here would fail to change the world, introducing those laws into something like the USMCA or other trade agreements would have huge impacts!
I think you have some really good ideas! I agree that NGOs should shift strategies. In the long run, it's proven to be ineffectual and that actually sitting down and rewarding behavior might be more useful than just shaming the "best" actors in the industry.
Hi Philip, I think this is a really interesting idea. I think something that could help would be that companies should have to be transparent about what "dirty" industries they're in but should also need to show some sort of plan to become less dirty in order to recieve endorsement.
Thanks for the post Philip. Although I don't believe most business decisions is driven by actions of NGOs, I do think this is an interesting topic to discuss. Part of the problem is human psychology. There is saying "You can't shame the shameless". Big TNCs like Walmart is hard to target because of their power, so they go for somebody what will likely listen. I think the satisfaction of successfully calling out someone drives a lot of activism circle. Just like "cancel culture", you can shame the Trumps of the world so you go for some generally good person who might have tweeted something racist 10 years ago. (Can you tell I spend a lot of time online haha). To fix this, we have to notices the problem and actively change our values.