This paper lays a framework for
designing an organization that will take
advantage of strategic sustainability or
corporate social responsibility
opportunities, and implement
sustainable and socially responsible
practices throughout its own
infrastructure and supply chain.
Sustainable
Organization
Design
Principles
Dirk Sampselle, OTMT 608.13
Dirk Sampselle
Sustainable Organization Design Principles
OTMT 608.13
Introduction
According to a 2010 Organizational Dynamics survey, over 75% of executives
worldwide say they believe that sustainability is “important to the financial success of their
companies,” but only 30-40% of those executives are taking steps to embed sustainability into
their core business practices.1
Given consumer, workforce, and investor trends, this gap between rhetoric and action
may prove more a strategic failure than an ethical one. A recent National Marketing Institute
survey found that approximately 68 million U.S. consumers state a preference for making
purchasing decisions based upon their sense of social and environmental responsibility: where
price and quality are equal, 86% of consumers would switch from their current brand to one that
is socially responsible. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of employees (69%) consider the
social and environmental track record of a company in deciding where to work, and socially
responsible investing has grown to represent nearly 10% of U.S. assets under management, or
roughly $2.3 trillion.
At the root of the surveyed executives’ failure to implement practices that capture these
trends may be a commensurate failure in their understanding of sustainable organization design
principles2 that allow firms to match the growing demand for “triple bottom line” businesses.3
This paper lays a framework for designing such an organization that will take advantage of
strategic sustainability or corporate social responsibility opportunities, while implementing
sustainable and socially responsible practices throughout its own infrastructure and supply chain.
I begin with a discussion of the need for integrating vision, mission, and values into a
firm’s organizational DNA; I discuss the intersection of values and greenwashing, and analyze
the difference between one-off initiatives and strategic integration of values and mission into the
business model. I next discuss the essential relationship between environmental influences and
organization strategy and recommend scanning practices. I then review Griffiths and Petrick’s
early work on corporate architectures for sustainability and update aspects of their framework.
Finally, I summarize the intersection of evolving corporate governance legal issues with the
organization design principles most aligned with a sustainability-focused business strategy. I
conclude by synthesizing brief recommendations from each section.
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Mission, Vision, and Values: The Danger of Rhetoric, The Power of Integration
A recent Accenture study found that a majority of CEOs who embraced the United
Nation’s Global Compact principles had adopted policies on and programs for sustainability, but
of that same majority, “comparatively few had made the necessary operational changes in their
supply chains and distribution systems or established sustainability goals and controls for their
lines-of-business.”4 This illustrates the organization design axiom that, while it is necessary for
companies to develop their vision, mission, and values statements, simply having them isn’t
sufficient.
Companies do best by incorporating the full range of stakeholders into the development
and implementation of the company’s core values and mission in pursuit of the vision.5
“Vanguard companies go beyond the lists of values posted on walls and Web sites by using their
codified set of values and principles as a strategic guidance system.’’6 While this may be true
for all companies, for firms embracing a sustainability focus, the need for values implementation
is far more acute, especially when it comes to branding.
Values for Branding: Greenwashing and Consumer Pressure
Recent years have seen popular uproar at companies not abiding by common notions of
business responsibility, and the uproar is even more clamorous when corporations engage in
“greenwashing,” or openly stating values that they then fail to embody and embrace to the extent
the public sees fit. Nike in the late ‘90s provides a well-known example:
“At the 1997 meeting of Business for Social Responsibility, a Nike representative
showed a video of happy workers in a Vietnamese factory. Unfortunately for
Nike, two days later - while the conference was still going on - a story appeared
on the front page of The New York Times about conditions in Vietnamese Nike
plants where workers were being exposed to carcinogens at 177 times safe levels,
and were being paid just $10 for a 65-hour work week, far longer than the local
law allowed.”7
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This sort of hypocrisy can be extremely damaging to a company’s brand image, and
consequently, to company value. A survey by Interbrand and Citibank found that 70% of the
value of the top 100 companies was attributed to goodwill in 1998, compared with 40% in 1988.8
Activist journalist Naomi Klein has noted that, in many ways, branding is the “Achilles heel” of
many major corporations: “the more that companies place their value to brand meaning and
brand image, the more vulnerable they are to attacks on that image.”9
The infamous Nike mistake was repeated in recent years by British Petroleum (BP). In
an attempt to capitalize on growing clean-tech consumer sympathies, beginning in 2000 BP ran a
public-facing “Beyond Petroluem” campaign, wherein, through its website, public print media,
and commercial airwaves, BP promoted itself with emotive advertisements about green energy.
But as of 2008, several years into the campaign, BP was still investing 93% of its resources in oil
and gas10 despite over $1 billion expended on the branding campaign.11 In 2006, a chief
architect of the “Beyond Petroleum” ads pronounced his disillusionment: "I guess, looking at it
now, 'Beyond Petroleum' is just advertising. It's become mere marketing -- perhaps it always was
-- instead of a genuine attempt to engage the public in the debate or a corporate rallying cry to
change the paradigm.”12 By the time the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident decimated the Gulf
coastline and killed nearly a dozen workers, it appeared to most that BP was simply repackaging
dirty practices with green dressing.
Values for Practices: The Need for Strategic Integration
While the BP and Nike incidents serve as examples of the danger of using values
commitments without the practices to back them up, the 2010 Super Bowl’s Coke-Pepsi rivalry
and the post-Hurricane Katrina efforts of Wal-Mart serve as a comparative study on the benefits
of strategic values integration.
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As part of its 2010 Super Bowl ad campaign, Coke pledged $1 to Boys and Girls Clubs
for each person who previewed its 2010 Super Bowl ads on its Facebook page. In response,
Pepsi launched its “Refresh” campaign, through which, instead of spending $20 million in Super
Bowl ads, it would benevolently donate those funds to people who had “refreshing ideas to
change the world.” 13 Although both campaigns clearly pursued worthy causes, neither possessed
the key element of effective sustainability practices: strategic integration.
One-off campaigns are fleeting and unsustainable, and of little brand and competitive
value, because they do not contribute to long-term strategy. While it is difficult to call them a
“waste,” they may be analogized to starting a backcountry hike with a foray into the surrounding
woods without first checking a map or compass. One-off initiatives preclude the firm from
creating scalable practices aligned with core competencies and competitive advantage.
Compare the Coke and Pepsi efforts with those of Wal-Mart after Hurricane Katrina. In
response to Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart utilized its extensive human resources and expertise in
logistics to make a massive contribution to Katrina’s victims. By leveraging a core competency
and key resource, it was able to deliver goods to those in urgent need, and make a huge impact.
Then, it used the success experience to springboard its launch into a far more expansive and
significant green campaign that “engages customers, suppliers, and staff in a war on waste,
obesity, and global warming.”14 It has taken steps to clean up its supply chain and started
carrying healthier, greener products. Thereby, Wal-Mart carried out the key element of
functionally integrating its mission, values, and vision: it strategically aligned its activities, and
integrated its sustainable practices into its core competencies.
By “baking” vision, mission, and values into their “corporate DNA,” companies can not
only contribute to the social and environmental bottom lines of the business, but develop
strategic advantages that enhance their financial bottom lines as well.
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IBM: A Paradigm for Strategic Values Integration
The story of the IBM turnaround is well-known. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, IBM’s
financial fortunes went south and its values along with it. Louis Gerstner led the turnaround
effort by transforming the company from hardware manufacturer to a services business, closing
down the PC software lines and acquiring the consulting arm of PwC.
In 2002, Sam Palmisano began focusing on rebuilding IBM’s culture and values. He
began by engaging stakeholders in an online conversation: tens of thousands of IBM-ers
participated in brainstorming, debate, and planning on the direction of the company. The online
conversation was so successful that two years later, the company held a “values jam” involving a
full 72 hours of dialogue. The result was the establishment of three stakeholder-defined core
values: “dedication to every client’s success; innovation that matters, for the company and the
world; and trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.”15
Based on these values, IBM set out to combine its commercial, social, and environmental
capabilities. When a team of IBM-ers doing community service in Bosnia after the Balkan
conflict found that relief workers from the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Doctors
Without Borders, and other NGOs “couldn’t communicate across one another’s computing
systems without open sourcing tools,” it capitalized on the opportunity to develop business
solutions for inter-connectivity in the commercial realm. IBM focused on integrating its
community and commercial efforts into a “socio-commercial strategy.” IBM learned from its
stakeholders and embraced responsibility as a source of innovation.
IBM began to meld its innovative technologies like grid computing, social networking,
and virtual worlds, and apply them toward creating a ‘‘smarter planet.’’ IBMs clients for a
smarter planet evolved from single businesses and government agencies to entire ecosystems of
organizations and interests that could be connected to ‘‘work smarter.’’ Martin Jetter, Chairman
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of IBM Germany, described that the new business value proposition was “based on IBM’s three
core value commitments;” it was uniquely IBM.16
Its strategy had developed through its first internal values jam, and since then, IBM has
hosted online jams with customers, suppliers, myriad stakeholders, and the public at large, and it
has focused them on diverse social and environmental problems calling for innovation. As such,
IBM used stakeholder values development to guide its strategic evolution from a “Defender”
hardware producer with mechanistic task design and bureaucratic organization design, to a
“Prospector” services provider with extensive scanning, elements of virtual and network
organization architectures, and an emphasis on flexibility and willingness to learn from the
environment and invent around it.17
Environmental Scanning and Stakeholder Engagement
Key to IBM’s turnaround strategy was its ability to scan stakeholder environments for not
only values development, but forward-thinking technologies and market opportunities. Rosabeth
Kanter, Author of SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth,
and Social Good, remarks that model enterprises utilize their values statements as a basis for
internal and external scanning: they ‘‘create and reinforce principles through active recitation
and search for interpretation. The statements are not hung passively on the wall; they are
internalized through inquiry.’’18 These companies engage all levels of employees in identifying
values, and then use engagement of stakeholders to orient and align corporate strategy in
accordance with environmental pressures related to their core competencies.
Unilever is perhaps the best historical example of a large company engaging in market
scanning to implement strategic values-focused business practices that enhance the financial
bottom line. As a company with historical commitments to society tracing to its founder in the
1800s,19 Unilever has consistently reinvented its heritage to align company initiatives with
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present societal needs and enterprise competencies. When a leader reported that there were “too
many unaligned programs and messages,’’ the company decided to create a new brand identity
that integrated the modern home-and-personal-care and food-and-beverage businesses
underneath a single corporate umbrella. It developed a strategically oriented mission ‘‘to add
vitality to life by meeting everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene, and personal care brands that
help people feel good, look good, and get more out of life,” and appointed Tex Gunning, CEO of
the Asian foods business, to organize stakeholders worldwide in a collective fact-finding and
action-plan-formulation effort. “Unilever scanned its world and reconsidered its role in
society.”20
Unilever’s environmental scanning identified sustainability themes material to Unilever
core competencies. For example, because of Unilever’s food and beverage business, the theme
of excessive environmentally-induced consumption was found to be essential. An analysis of
New York Times articles found that in 1990, 84% of stories stressed that obesity was caused by
individual eating-and-exercise habits, whereas by 2003, 46% cited environmental causes such as
pressure from advertising toward unhealthy products, and poor availability of healthy options.
The threefold increase was attributed to processed-food purveyors, fast-food franchises, and softdrink makers. Rather than repackaging the same foods with a healthy branding campaign,
Unilever targeted the environmental relationship between consumption and obesity as a valuesoriented area of social responsibility that Unilever could convert into a strategic advantage.
Unilever then targeted its lion’s share of future growth in developing and emerging
markets as the ideal launching pad for its “Vitality” approach to enhance nutritional health and
hygiene. Its tactics included the sale of iodized salt in India and parts of Africa, addressing a
key dietary deficiency common among the poor; and a campaign for hand washing in India,
where its Lifebuoy soap aimed to reduce diarrheal disease. It submitted 25,000 recipes to
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nutritional analysis, and reformulated them to make them healthier, and entered into a
partnership with UNICEF, through which it launched a ‘‘kid’s nutrition’’ campaign that included
research into the impact of saturated fats on children’s physical and mental performance,
conferences on improving youth eating patterns and preferences, and development of healthy
breakfast foods aimed at fortifying the diet of poor children. In first world markets, the company
introduced new tea products with antioxidant benefits and dramatically reduced sugar content,
and a new smoothie beverage made from concentrated vegetables and fruit juices.
Unilever also increased its focus on environmental sustainability. Over two-thirds of its
raw materials came from agriculture, meaning that, at a four percent growth rate, the company
would use 20% more pesticides on farms, 20% more packaging and associated waste and litter,
20% more water needed to grow crops, and 20% more water used by consumers to cook, wash,
or clean with company products, over a period of five years. So it devised new local supply
chains to make products more affordable, and developed distribution channels that turned
underprivileged women into village-level entrepreneurs. This, in turn, allowed them to take
advantage of the evolving trend toward healthy and sustainable consumption, with organic foods
and clothing growing at 20% annually, fair trade at over 70% annually, and ethical consumerism
growth through interest in cause-related products and in brands’ social responsibility.21
Organizational Architectures for Sustainability
All of these opportunities to capture values-oriented market trends are internalized
through organization design, and capturing evolving trends in a values-oriented context can
prove especially difficult for established firms. For example, an IBM executive remarked, ‘‘we
had the technology, but not the right skill mix and capacity to relate to so many different
groups.’’22 Capturing core values in an organization design proposition required a “willingness
to invent as things went along;” there were “no models of a multilateral organization to apply to
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this case, nor a clear roadmap of how the relationships work or should evolve.”23 This is to say
that bureaucratic organization structure and mechanistic task design, while perhaps fruitful for
certain aspects of leader firms’ activities, may inhibit firms’ abilities to discover and then capture
values-aligned opportunities.
Andrew Griffiths and Joseph A. Petrick’s early work on organizational design for
sustainable enterprises identifies three ways in which traditional large corporation hierarchical
architectures impede sustainability competitiveness.24 First, established task routines promote
the status quo and result in “dynamic conservatism.” New practices and theories of the firm’s
value to society are perceived as threats when firms rely heavily on routines and command-andcontrol style management systems. Second, the authors find that command-and-control,
hierarchical architectures deny access to stakeholder input. The traditional organizational design
focuses only on a very limited set of stakeholders: the board of directors and stockholders.
Perceivably based on our discussion above, the lack of stakeholder integration inhibits effective
values formulation, reduces scanning, and precludes opportunities for innovation. Finally,
Griffiths and Petrick say that no department in the traditional corporate architecture has
“specialized environmentally relevant knowledge to recognize, act on, and transfer to other parts
of the organization.” However, our earlier discussion of values integration and scanning
techniques teaches us that it is not one department that must possess specialized knowledge, but
rather a collaborative group from across the organization that must assimilate and develop action
plans based on the knowledge to capitalize on opportunities.
In tune with that observation, the Griffiths and Petrick study shows that power should be
devolved to individuals and local communities to create citizen-inspired agenda for local
sustainability; and that firms should play an active role in creating communities where
production and use align with community needs. Unilever’s local supply chain and distribution
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efforts discussed above are ready examples of a leading firm’s implementation of these practices.
The Griffiths and Petrick study also shows that smaller structures were more responsive to
concerns. The above examples of multinational corporations’ successes in sustainability
initiatives indicate that while overall small structures may not be necessary, responsiveness
indeed is.
The study identifies three alternative organizational architectures which may be able to
mitigate size effects, and provide alternative routes to responsiveness. The first alternative
architecture is “network” organizational design. The second is “virtual” organizational design.
The third is “communities of practice.”
Network organizations are defined by dispersed service nodes, and small, flexible,
responsive, and innovative units even when overall organization size grows. Network
organizations are able to respond to changing market conditions with the speedy development of
products and services. However, they are reliant upon free-flowing information, adequate
communication fora, and employees that are appropriately skilled and motivated.
Virtual organizations leave a minimal environmental footprint, can give the impressions
and benefits of size, and can operate globally with a small number of employees. Land’s End
mail-order catalogue and Amazon.com are ready examples. The information technology of
virtual organizations allows extensive outsourcing, but this creates an imperative for the virtual
organizations to remain responsible for the impacts of their suppliers and distributors.
The authors define “communities of practice” as amorphous, nonhierarchal structures that
form around areas of interest and expertise. Status in the communities is based on expertise and
contribution to the development of leading ideas, rather than position or authority. The
communities are effective because they are able to take on new members, acquire new
information, and remain focused on common interest and the desire for learning.
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Virtual organization design principles are best exemplified by the “jams” led by HP.
Network organization design is exemplified by the localized supply chain and distribution
initiatives implemented by Unilever: despite enormous size, Unilever was able to develop
feedback from stakeholder communities, internalize that feedback into its emerging markets
strategy, and then implement pocketed local suppliers and distribution channels that served local
needs. IBM’s organic outreach efforts at CARE and other ngos are also stellar examples of
using networks to discover market opportunities. Finally, Herman Miller’s implementation of
cradle-to-cradle design principles through their DfE process is emblematic of the Communities
of Practice organization design: Herman Miller leveraged organic committees of engineers and
chemical analysts to determine the ideal chemical makeup of product components, and then
leveraged the findings of those communities to develop its overall environmental strategy.
Alternative Legal Architectures for Values-Oriented Businesses
The Fiduciary Problem
Despite growing interest in alternative organization design and integration of stakeholder
interest with organization interest, the traditional law of corporate governance poses barriers to
doing so. The notion that the exclusive purpose of a business corporation is to create financial
gain for its shareholders was forcefully articulated by the Michigan Supreme Court almost 100
years ago in the landmark case of Dodge v. Ford. In that case, Henry Ford (“Ford”), founder of
Ford Motors, was majority shareholder and Chairman of the corporation’s board of directors.
Ford Motors had been earning substantial profits, but Ford decided not to issue a dividend to
shareholders; instead, he proposed to use the money to hire additional employees to fight
unemployment, and increase benefits for employees. His testimony in the case stated that he saw
no point in increasing profits if he could not use them to care for his employees. The Michigan
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Supreme Court found that the decision breached his fiduciary duty of good faith to the
corporation, stating:
“A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the
stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The
discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end,
and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to
the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to
other purposes.”
Dodge v. Ford illustrates the legal difficulty sustainability-focused firms may face if they
do too much to incorporate stakeholder interests in their business model. According to most
interpretations of the opinion, business models must focus on sustainability only insofar as doing
so enhances firm profits and shareholder value. For example, creating benefits for Unilever’s
stakeholders in developing and emerging markets may be seen as an illegitimate purpose for
Unilever’s resources if creation of those benefits detracts from Unilever shareholder value.
Recent Legislative Responses
To respond to this concern, state legislatures have been passing legislation that allow
firms to adopt an alternative legal form called the “Benefit Corporation.” Unlike traditional
corporations, Benefit Corporations must by law create “a material positive impact on society;
consider how decisions affect employees, community and the environment; and publicly report
their social and environmental performance using established third-party standards.”25 A Benefit
Corporation must create a “general public benefit” (included in the corporation’s statement of
purpose), which benefit must be measured by an independent third-party standard. A “general
public benefit” means a material, positive impact on society and the environment, as measured
by a third-party standard, through activities that promote a combination of specific public
benefits. 26 Specific public benefits as set forth in the statute are:

Providing individuals or communities with beneficial products or services
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
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Promoting economic opportunity for individuals or communities beyond the creation of
jobs in the normal course of business
Preserving the environment
Improving human health
Promoting the arts, sciences, or advancement of knowledge
Increasing the flow of capital to entities with a public benefit purpose27
A Benefit Corporation director does not have a separate duty to the beneficiaries of the
public benefit purposes of the Benefit Corporation. However, the director must consider the
effects of any action or decision not to act on:





The stockholders of the benefit corporation
The employees and workforce of the benefit corporation and the subsidiaries and
suppliers of the benefit corporation
The interests of customers as beneficiaries of the general or specific public benefit
purposes of the benefit corporation (as opposed to general beneficiaries of the public
benefit purposes, who the director is not obliged to consider)
Community and societal considerations, including those of any community in which
offices or facilities of the benefit corporation or the subsidiaries or suppliers of the benefit
corporation are located, and
The local and global environment.”
It is foreseeable that adoption of the Benefit Corporation legal form would promote – or
at least allow – adoption of alternative organizational architectures that enhance stakeholder
value, and allow more complete integration of stakeholder interests in firm “DNA.”
Conclusion
Leader firms in sustainability must be competent at engaging stakeholders to develop
core values; scanning the surrounding environment for values-oriented opportunities; and
integrating values-oriented opportunities into strategic decision-making processes. Firms
seeking to adopt best practices of design should consider network and virtual design principles
for stakeholder engagement, and communities of practice design principles to integrate
knowledge into core practices. Firms should also consider alternative legal entities to facilitate
stakeholder engagement and blended value creation for both stakeholders and shareholders.
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Endnotes
1
Mirvis, Googins, Kinnicutt; Vision, Mission, Values: Guideposts to Sustainability. Organizational Dynamics
(2010) 39, 316.
2
“Sustainable organization design” is used in certain contexts to refer simply to organization designs which preserve
financial sustainability. In this paper, the term is used to refer to organization design principles for what are
commonly called “triple bottom line businesses.”
3
Triple Bottom Line, The Economist, Ideas, http://www.economist.com/node/14301663, accessed November 19,
2011. “The phrase “the triple bottom line” was first coined in 1994 by John Elkington, the founder of a British
consultancy called SustainAbility. His argument was that companies should be pursuing three different (and quite
separate) bottom lines. One is the traditional measure of corporate profit—the “bottom line” of the profit and loss
account. The second is the bottom line of a company’s “people account”—a measure in some shape or form of how
socially responsible an organisation has been throughout its operations. The third is the bottom line of the
company’s “planet” account—a measure of how environmentally responsible it has been. The triple bottom line
(TBL) thus consists of three Ps: profit, people and planet.”
4
Mirvis, Googins, Kinnicutt; Vision, Mission, Values: Guideposts to Sustainability. Organizational Dynamics
(2010) 39, 316-324.
5
A vision, in our definition here, is simply a picture of what success for the business will be at a particular time in
the future. It is Collins and Porras’ BHAG – the big, hairy, audacious goal that an enterprise sets out to achieve. It
is the “what.” A mission, by contrast, defines the purpose for the company – the “why.” And the values statement
serves as its “strategic guidance system” – the “how.” Together, they can capture opportunity for innovation and
bolster a company’s strategic advantage. But to do so, they must be integrated into the company’s DNA.
6
Rosabeth Moss Kanter; SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social
Good (2009).
7
Sharon Beder, Nike’s Greenwashing Sweatshop Labor, April 2002, http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes
/nikesweatshop.cfm, Accessed November 19, 2001.
8
Sharon Beder, Environmentalists Help Manage Corporate Reputation: Changing Perceptions not Behaviour,
Ecopolitics: Thought and Action, 1(4), Spring 2002, 60-72.
9
Naomi Klein in CBC Entertainment, “Hot Type: Activist Naomi Klein on her new book No Logo', (CBC,
http://archives.cbc.ca/economy_business/consumer_goods/clips/14722/), 2000
10
BP: Beyond Petroleum or Broken Promise? The Brand Positioning Workshop,
http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2010/06/bp-beyond-petroleum-or-broken-promise.html
11
Sharon Beder, 'BP: Beyond Petroleum?' in Battling Big Business: Countering greenwash, infiltration and other
forms of corporate bullying, edited by Eveline Lubbers, Green Books, Devon, UK, 2002, pp. 26-32. (“Rsearch and
preparation cost $7 million; bp planned to spend $200 million between 2000 and 2002 rebranding its facilities and
changing signs and stationery and another $400 million on advertising its gasoline and pushing the new logo.”)
12
John Kenney, Beyond Propoganda, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/opinion/14kenney.html
13
Pepsi Refresh Campaign, http://www.refresheverything.com/, Accessed Nov 19, 2011.
14
Mirvis, Googins, Kinnicutt; Vision, Mission, Values: Guideposts to Sustainability. Organizational Dynamics
(2010) 39, 316-324.
15
Id.
16
Id.
17
See, e.g., Raymond E. Miles and Charles C. Snow, Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1978)
18
Rosabeth Moss Kanter; SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social
Good (2009).
19
In the late 1800s, William Hesketh Lever created a company village offering housing to workers at reasonable
rents and introduced the then-unheard-of eight hour workday, sickness benefits, holiday pay, and pensions for both
male and female employees.
20
By Tojo Thatchenkery, Advances in Positive Design 3, “Positive Design and Appreciative Construction: From
Sustainable Development to Sustainable Value” P48
21
Paul Shrivastava and Stuart Hart, Creating Sustainable Corporations, Business Strategy and the environment, Vol.
4 154-165 (1995).
22
Id.
23
Id.
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Andrew Griffiths and Joseph A. Petrick, Corporate architectures for sustainability, International Journal of
Operations & Production Management, Vol. 21 No. 12 (2001) 1573-1585.
25
B Lab/B Corporation, Maryland First State in Union to Pass Benefit Corporation Legislation,
http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/29332-Maryland-First-State-in-Union-to-Pass-Benefit-CorporationLegislation, Accessed Nov. 19, 2011.
26
Jackson & Campbell, P.C. – The Maryland Benefit Corporation Act, accessed at
http://www.jackscamp.com/publications/Summary_of_Benefit_Corp_Legislation.pdf, Accessed Nov 19, 2011.
27
Maryland was the first state to pass the Benefit Corporation legislation. It was passed into law in 2010. MD.
CODE ANN., CORPS. & ASS’NS § 5-6C-01 (West 2011). The legislation is now also passed in Vermont,
Virginia, New Jersey, and California. It will likely also be passed in New York before the end of the year. Notably
absent from the movement thus far is Delaware, which is home to over 90% of publicly traded corporations.
15