Pursuing Change That Would Boost Sustainability
BY PROFESSOR MARK PETERSON
Now more than ever, the world needs committed scholars and teachers of sustainability to pursue change. Such change might be developing a course on sustainable marketing for one’s school of business. It might be turning a working paper on sustainable marketing into a published article. It also might mean inspiring students or practitioners in one’s network to pursue sustainability as a key dimension of their future work. Each of these endeavors would involve change and would move sustainability a bit closer to becoming mainstream in business culture.
In September 2022, a very accomplished undergraduate student at the University of Wyoming’s College of Business where I teach came to my office and surprised me by asking: “When did sustainability become mainstream?” I had never considered this question before and so I offered a reply that included me saying that I would have to think more about this question.
During days of pondering this question, I developed my thoughts about whether sustainability had moved into the mainstream of culture and featured them in a commentary published in the December 2022 issue of the Journal of Sustainable Marketing (Peterson, 2022a). Spoiler alert – I concluded that sustainability is not mainstream. Metaphorically, sustainability is no longer only crawling as a baby, but walking as a toddler.
If my conclusion is accurate, is this bad news or is this good news? For a world in need of better business practices that would integrate environmental and social concerns into business decisions of firms, this is bad news. However, firms are beginning to integrate sustainability concepts into all areas of their operations and management. Outdoor garment firm Patagonia is an exemplar firm for integrating environmental issues this way. Walmart tops the Fortune 500 list and has taken enormous strides in integrating sustainability concepts into its culture. Walmart’s 15 questions for suppliers makes its entire supply chain move toward sustainability targets in the realms of 1) energy and climate, 2) material efficiency, 3) natural resources, and 4) people and community (Walmart 2023).
Sustainability out of the mainstream, but walking on its own now is good news for scholars and teachers. It is like a vast new territory has been discovered. So much is needed in theory development (explaining what accounts for firms effectively adopting sustainability concepts, and what accounts for successes). So much is needed in terms of methods development in sustainability (metrics for degrees of sustainability adoption and functionality for firms along the lines of the SERVQUAL dimensions published in 1988 (Parasuraman et al., 2002)).
In teaching sustainability to business students, a systems approach works well because many challenges facing humanity are complex problems spanning territories and academic disciplines. Some of these “wicked” problems include climate change, global flows of contraband, and exclusion from markets for many on the planet. Macromarketing (which focuses on the interplay between marketing and society) has addressed such issues since its inception in 1976. Each chapter of my book Sustainable Marketing: A Holistic Approach is grounded on scholarship of macromarketers, such as Shelby Hunt, Bob Lusch, Bill Kilbourne and Roger Layton. The book is written for skeptics of sustainability, so it is written to persuade rather than expecting students to understand why firms would choose to adopt sustainability concepts. This presents many points for discussion and debate during the course on issues, such as 1) the role of marketing in society, 2) the role of the state in society, 3) the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in sustainability, and 4) is poverty a solvable problem for society?
Since 2009, I have taught a Sustainable Business Practices course at the University of Wyoming. I have done this across all levels (undergrad, MBA and PhD). Since the publication of the first edition in 2011, I have used Sustainable Marketing: A Holistic Approach. The second edition published in 2021 features many examples from outside the US, such as the EU, Asia and Australia. To help others teach sustainability and experience its rewards, I have authored a 2022 article in the Journal of Marketing Education on teaching business sustainability (Peterson 2022b).
I find teaching sustainability to be rewarding. This is the time to become more effective agents of change, so that future generations (represented by our students) will make contributions to sustainability that will long endure in the mainstream of business culture.
References
Parasuraman, A., Berry, L., & Zeithaml, V. (2002). Refinement and reassessment of the SERVQUAL scale. Journal of Retailing, 67(4), 114.
Peterson, M. (2021). Sustainable marketing: A holistic approach. London: SAGE Publications.
Peterson, M. (2022a). Where Are We Now in Our Sustainability Journey?. Journal of Sustainable Marketing, 1(9).
Peterson, M. (2022b). Using macromarketing to teach business sustainability. Journal of Marketing Education, 44(3), 390-401.
Walmart (2023), Supplier sustainability assessment: 15 questions for suppliers. Accessed at Supplier Sustainability Assessment - December 2009 (walmart.com).
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