Business owner and corporate communications expert E. Bruce Harrison of EnviroComm International, and author of the important and corporate policy changing book Corporate Greening 2. 0: Create and Communicate Your Company's Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his book. He also shares his thoughts on corporate environmental strategy and communications.
Thanks to Bruce Harrison for his time and to Carol Corbett at Publishing Works, Inc. for arranging this interesting and informative interview on a very timely topic.
What was the background to writing the book Corporate Greening 2. 0: Create and Communicate Your Company's Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies?
E. Bruce Harrison: My purpose was to answer questions and clear up confusion that company managers have—especially when it comes to their business success and their stakeholder relationships—regarding the rising issue of climate change and carbon constraint.
Has thinking green come to the forefront of corporate thinking?
E. Bruce Harrison: It has risen in importance as a top management issue because of the attention given to global warming and carbon constraint.
How has the issue of carbon been been brought into the equation?
E. Bruce Harrison: For the first time in history, scientists, environmental activists and politicians have encouraged companies as well as the public to consider carbon dioxide emissions as a major contributor to global climate change.
How has political activism affected thinking on corporate greening?
E. Bruce Harrison: Political activism moves toward government requirements. Companies are motivated to think through the government endgame and to work with the politicians, or office holders, toward rational achievement of green goals.
Are investors placing more pressure on companies to become more green and to become more aware of sustainability?
E. Bruce Harrison: Investor groups, stimulated by green advocates, have introduced many dozens of stockholder resolutions pushing management toward climate change and sustainability positions. Investors in some companies are at the same time cautioning management about political commitments and costs that can hurt the viability of businesses.
E. Bruce Harrison (photo left)
How are environmentally aware executives making a difference?
E. Bruce Harrison: One general example is the involvement of executives in the political process, working with environmental groups and Congress on proposed climate change legislation. Within specific companies, a great many examples of top management commitment and actions are out there; I give details of 42 “benchmark” companies in my book.
Is the public expecting more sustainability from corporations, and are the companies better communicating that message?
E. Bruce Harrison: Yes to both questions, but here’s the problem: Sustainability has become such an overused word that it has lost a lot of precision and relevance. I talk about corporate sustainability and I define it as balancing three accountabilities—economic, social and political. A company has to do all three to stay viable. The book is largely about how corporate greening works into all three.
What is the next frontier for corporate greening?
E. Bruce Harrison: Let’s just consider the war on carbon as the new frontier. Company management must deal with the fact that carbon constraint will put greening into new contexts, linked in new ways to essential energy economics, and to new technologies, products, processes and markets. The big question, which I try to make very practical in the book, is how does the company deal with risk as well as opportunity as it steps onto this new and largely unexplored landscape?
What is next for Bruce Harrison?
E. Bruce Harrison: As an adjunct professor at the university level, I’m interested in what’s happening with crises in business. Every day there seems to be a new crisis. Social media seems to be changing public perception and raising management communication challenges. I’m thinking there may be a book in there—along with two other areas that I’m not ready to get into just yet.
Wayne, thanks for asking!
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My book review of Corporate Greening 2. 0: Create and Communicate Your Company's Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies by E. Bruce Harrison.
E. Bruce Harrison, (photo left) author of Corporate Greening 2. 0: Create and Communicate Your Company's Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies (2008) and Going Green: How to Communicate Your Company's Environmental Commitment (1993), has been called the pioneer of corporate greening.
Bruce has provided counsel on greening/sustainability matters to more than 50 Fortune 500 companies over the course of his career as vice president of Freeport-McMoran, CEO of his Washington-based consultancy, and founder/franchiser of EnviroComm International in the U.S. and Europe. He was the first executive director of the Arthur W. Page Society, comprising senior corporate communications executives, and has since 1998 worked as a team member creating Green Diesel Technology® products at Navistar International. Bruce assists companies in connecting with effective EnviroComm professional counselors.
Bruce is a frequent speaker on greening and sustainability. His lecture, "Factors Favoring Chief Communication Officers Involvement in Climate Change and Sustainability Issues", was recognized as the best paper presented by a practitioner at the 2008 Corporate Communication International conference at Wroxton College, England.
He was recognized by PRWeek in 2001 as one of the "Top 100 Most Influential PR People of the 20th Century" for his work with companies in environmental and social responsibility.
