Toby Webb has six principles for successful B2B sustainability collaboration

Everywhere you look these days, some kind of potentially system-changing B2B sustainability collaboration is taking place. From apparel design to factory safety, to palm oil basics and innovation, these groups are emerging everywhere.

Some, such as those in electronics, have been around for years. Others, such as in internet freedom, or global web access, are still finding their way.
The latest is in the automotive sector. Then we have the commodity groupings beyond just palm oil: cotton, soy, leather and many others. A notable newcomer is deforestation-free clothing.

Some, such as the Heathrow Sustainability Partnership, are very focused, others much broader. More than a few of these groups have the potential to be system changing: that elusive ideal.

In short, in business terms alone, it means thinking holistically about inputs (R&D, sourcing, incentives, logistics design) to drive improved outputs in the supply chain (safer buildings, less carbon, better conditions, managed agriculture). Over time, these can change the system.

If the top 10 companies persuade the top 50 companies in a sector to adapt together, consistently, then we may have system change. And that can form the basis of a new set of global, sector expectations.

The obvious tests for these groups, if they are to be taken seriously, will be the following:

1. Pace: how quickly can five or 10 companies make a substantive, measured difference?

2. Depth: how deep can they go beyond their own operations into the supply chain?

3. Governance: how well managed are they and how transparent?

4. Communication on failure and success: how far can they push members to report, and aggregate that in a credible way?

5. Accountability: what they do with laggard members. This is one of the hardest areas. Carrot usually wins over stick, but without some of the NGO and media “stick” attention, some of this wouldn’t happen, so the balance is key.

6. Influence: how they use their work to raise the bar elsewhere.

Making a difference

The multistakeholder groups that have made a difference to date, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative, the Kimberley Process and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, each took at least five to gain real traction.

In their own way they are also still at early stages. These newer, focused B2B groups, monitored by NGOs in some cases, catalysed in others (or both) have a significant advantage over the classic, slower moving “one member one vote” model of multistakeholder initiatives. They can move faster. There’s greater potential for understanding, and the competitive spirit can be invoked.

Not that any of this is easy. Nike is as different from H&M as Shell is from Statoil. And some of these groups are just not run well enough. Some pretend to think big, but don’t. Some will fail, and should do so.

But on some of the really big issues, there is genuine momentum building in large companies with sustainability vulnerabilities. They are recognising that if we want to create opportunity, whether in circular economy business models or in tackling supply chain working conditions, the much discussed “collaboration” we’ve all been hearing about endlessly at conferences for a decade has finally to happen, properly.

We know governments will only reflect business progress on sustainability, rather than drive it, but we also need to show them how to catalyse it. This can and will be done much quicker than it is today. But business has to demonstrate how the credible models will work, or risk the blunt instrument of government policy or regulation.

The six principles set out above, while not original, may shed some light on how these accepted and effective models for eventual systemic change can be developed.

On the pre-competitive base of sustainability and collaborations in governance challenges, will sit the layer of brand competition that the market CEOs and investors love so much. We are not quite there yet. We are, though, a lot closer than we were five years ago, and that is something to be celebrated.

Toby Webb is founder of Ethical Corporation and Stakeholder Intelligence. He blogs at http://tobiaswebb.blogspot.co.uk.

B2B  principles  sustainability collaboration 

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