Sustainability from a Multi-Stakeholder approach
15th MIBAS Debates on CSR - “Multi-Stakeholder approach towards sustainability”
Guests:
- Hubertus Drinkuth, Managing Director of Systain Consulting GmbH, Hamburg
- Michael Gaus, Green Party in Lüneburg, President of the Commission for the protection of the environment in the county of Lüneburg
- Tristan Jorde, Head of the environmental division in the Consumer Advice Center in Hamburg (Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg)
- Dr. Maximilian Schormair, Research Associate at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Hamburg
Sustainability is a very popular term in our modern, developed society, which we hear day by day from different sources and in different contexts. Although so many interested parties support and work in sustainable initiatives, it is impossible for them to face all the challenges on their own as sustainability is so complex. The greatest threat to sustainability is the belief that someone else is responsible for it. It seems obvious that the government, businesses, NGOs and consumers, have to join forces and cooperate. However, this is not always happening.
Are businesses ready to compromise on profit in order to make their production greener? Do customers really wait for sustainable products in the shops or do they still prefer to buy the cheapest? Is the government going to support sustainable practices and how? The representatives of each stakeholder group were invited to discuss these tricky questions at the 15th MIBAS Debate “Multi-Stakeholder approach towards sustainability”, which took place on the 15th of May, 2018.
Four speakers took the roles to represent the positions of different stakeholder groups and argued from governmental, business, consumer and academic perspectives. Michael Gaus from the Green Party represented the government perspective. He is the President of the Commission for the protection of the environment in the county of Lüneburg and his main interests are in topics of environmental protection, such as the protection of waters, land use, nature conservation and its conflicts of use with tourism or agriculture as well as sustainability strategies. Hubertus Drinkuth, who represented the business stakeholder group, is managing director of Systain Consulting in Hamburg. With Systain he makes companies understand that sustainability issues truly matter and helps them to overcome their biggest challenges. The consumer perspective was represented by Tristan Jorde, who leads the environmental division in the Consumer Advice Center in Hamburg (Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg). The consumer advice center Hamburg provides information, advice, lectures and seminars as well as publications on issues that affect consumers. Dr. Maximilian Schormair was representing the non-financial sector, providing inputs from an academical prospective. He has research experience and interests in stakeholder value and shared value theory, political CSR and multi-stakeholder governance.
To open the debate the guests were asked to define the term “sustainability” and the definitions of all four speakers differed from each other, which gave the dispute a good start. Hubertus Drinkuth mentioned in his speech that NGOs often put pressure on businesses and make them focus on specific topics, which are not the most important and harmful for them. Thus, he gave an example of a company, which, after a NGO had launched a public negative campaign, had to concentrate on the problem of water pollution. However, water pollution was not the biggest issue that this company faced. Therefore, focusing on another issue would be more meaningful and effective for this company. This statement generated a highly divisive debate, where Dr. Schormair challenged this opinion with other fruitful examples. Tristan Jorde shared with the audience his insights from daily work with consumer complaints and suggestions, which showed that society is also very interested in getting greener products and is actually paying attention to the reputation of companies. Michael Gaus shared his experiences from working for the Green party and told the audience about initiatives, which were already implemented. At the same time, he emphasized the difficulties in promoting an initiative and to make it work officially with the governmental approval. Often this process takes so long that many initiatives die on the way. The guests highlighted the number of challenges of the multi-stakeholder approach, but they agreed on the crucial necessity of cooperation.
In the final part of the debates a very interesting exercise was proposed by the moderator. The guests were asked to change the roles and to thus take the position of another stakeholder group and advocate its opinion. Dr. Maximilian Schormair, who was initially highlighting the great commitment of NGOs, was asked to argue from the position of businesses and Hubertus Drinkuth, who criticized a lot the work of NGOs, was asked to represent their position. The dispute turned into another direction and as the speakers stated, it was very useful and interesting for them to discover the challenges from the opposite prospective.
Even after the official end of the debates the speakers continued arguing together with the audience in a relaxed atmosphere having some drinks and snacks. It can be said with a high degree of confidence that these debates were truly intense and robust as the speakers had often completely opposite opinions and wanted to convince the audience that only their point of view is the right one. As the result, the audience and speakers themselves profited from such a valuable and lively discussion. The organizational team wishes to express its appreciation and thanks the speakers and the audience for the active participation. We are looking forward to the next debates!