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In this episode, we speak with Jury Gualandris, an associate professor of operations management and sustainability at Ivey Business School. Jury serves as the associate director of Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value, and leads the Network for Business Sustainability, a global network of over 35,000 business leaders and researchers that aim to mobilize more sustainable business strategies and practices worldwide.
Jury shares his definition of sustainability, discusses the importance of teaching sustainability in business schools, and explains how Ivey is uniquely equipped to meet the demand for sustainability education. Additionally, Jury talks about the new partnership between Ivey’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value and Ivey publishing, Ivey’s curated sustainability case collection, and the future of sustainability in business education. Enjoy!
Resources featured in this episode:
New Ivey initiative integrating SDGs into management education
HP Canada Co.: A Circular Supply Chain for Recycled Plastic
A&W Canada: Serving Great Taste with Minimal Waste
Huawei: Struggling to Develop a More Sustainable Supply Network
Cradle-to-Cradle Design at Herman Miller: Moving Toward Environmental Sustainability
Polyface: The Farm of Many Faces
Ivey, City of Guelph to unlock value of food ‘waste’
Transcript
Hi, I'm at Quinn thanks for joining us again for decision point from Ivy Publishing at the Ivy Business School today, I'm joined by Eurie Gal Andres. An associate professor of operations, Management and sustainability jury serves as the Associate Director of IV Center for building sustainable value and leads the network for business, sustain ability, a global network of Port of our thirty five thousand business leaders and researchers that aim to mobilize more sustainable business strategies and practices world wide in this episode, Yore shares his definition of sustainability, discusses the importance of teaching sustainability and business schools and explains how ivy is uniquely equipped to meet the demand for sustainability education. Additionally, Eurie talks about the New Partnership Between Ivy Center for building sustainable value and I'd be publishing. I these curates sustainability, case collection and the future of sustainability and business education, enjoy your thanks pretty much for joining us today. Let's start ran into some definitions and how you look at things so you're an associate professor in operations, management and sustainability, and you lead the circular economy, Priority Area for IV Center for building sustainable value. Can you explain to the listeners what sustainability really means? Thank you. Mat Sustainability or sustainable development has been defined in many different ways. The most probably known and diffused the Phoenician is the one from our common future. So stainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs. So, essentially, is economic development that not just avoid the depletion of natural resources, but regenerate his natural resources does not just contribute to society through profit, but also avoids negative implications in terms of inequality, human rights, social injustice and so forth. So it's it's this notion of being able to use the resources and conserve them over time, both human resources and natural resources, potentially amplifying the benefits of using these resources in society, and one of the terms that we often hear about along with sustainability is circular economy. What is this and how does it fit into the sustainability discipline so to be sustainable? A business has to be in syndicus with the natural environment in society, which means that it has to operate within the threshold of natural and social systems. The circular economy is just the embodiment of this definition because it connects firms within and across supply chains, so they waste or what we call waste, which is just resources in the wrong place at the wrong time. The waste of one organization becomes the defeat stock of another. It's about business, production and consumption, that is, that is contained within the earth. Lamiter limits and the economic value that the circular system generate should be fairly redistributed across its constituencies. So again, is this notion of having a system that uses resources in the most effective and efficient way, so that we can avoid the pollution over time and potentially contribute to regeneration. Well, that's great thanks. Yeah thanks for clarifying those things, because when we think about it, we're not often you know have the definition in front of us or can think of examples, but I really love how you put you know the waste from one becomes an input for another. I think that's in theory what it should happen and our research is actually focusing on all the cognitive but also operational barriers that you know come in between the idea of the circular economy and the execution of the circular economy, but certainly that that should be our goal. Waste is just material in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, that's that's a great way of looking at it. Now from Ivy Publishing's perspective, we've seen a tremendous growth in the number of sustainability related case submissions really over the past three years. Why do you think sustainability is becoming such an important part of the business school curriculum and environment? I believe sustainability can simply not be neglected any more. The lack of substant is manifesting around us every day in different parts of the world. So we begin to experience our fragile. Our economic systems are to the KIMO crisis and the loss of biodiversity. I believe that for some time, the concept of externalities at later role in how we managed businesses so in every customer transaction, the prize would not reflect the negative implications that that transaction generates for the environment and society at large for third parties in session. But now this externalities are coming back and hunting us. So if you think about kind of change, manifestation supply chain disruptions, global warming, fires and so far, and so for and the implications that had that that is heading for our daily life and as well as for businesses more in general. Just it's something! We cannot neglect any more. Why we neglected in the past is because also what I teach to my students, I think different reasons, but my main explanation results around the concept of separation. We experience cognitive, psychological, but also geographical and temporal separation, from what we do and the consequences of what we do. So, if what if I pollute here that goes in the atmosphere- and there is acid rain happening somewhere else in the world- that I don't experience but is caused by by my activity, if I don't experience, I don't feel the consequences. I will never correct my behavior. Similarly, if I buy a product that is cheap and good quality, and I don't see how that product is produced because the supply chain is not transparent, I will never think about child labor. I will never think about workers, safety and the lack of worker safety, and we all know what happened at Rana Plaza in thousand and eleven thousands of people died, and it wasn't the first manifestation of the problem. When Organization tried to address the problem, what they discover is that they didn't know how, because they were not capable of empathizing with the conditions, the local situation in the areas where we used to produce from because we simply don't. He know how to relate with with those societies with those cultures with those systems. Now, some of that some of this separation is just overcome through digital resources, technology, but also climate change manifestations that that make it real. We know where products come from. We are much more aware of the implications of our consumption. We are much more aware of the implication of our production and and we need to act fast and one of the things that you've mentioned is so as a species. We don't have a future without sustainable business and management, and it's something that we're putting in front of students because they can't ignore it, and it's our really role as an institution to develop the next group of leaders. So it's something they've got to be able to tackle, and I love how you've talked about that previously yeah. So I think firms have had a bias to firm level problems that lead to firm level solutions that might be economic success economically successful, but my not or my create unintended consequences for other systems, as you put it very brilliantly, there's no future, there's no real future for us and our R children without a sustainable business and management. So we've recently partnered with the IV Center for building sustainable value to curate. You Know Sustainability case collection. What was the impetus for this partnership? How does this fit with the mission of the of the center? How are you looking at this? So I'm a operations, management, scholar and Subtonic, but I look at the man a supply very often, and so I think this happened, because there is strong demand and the ringstand very strong supply of Ivy. What I mean by the man is that students are mobilizing around the world to ask demand for more sustainability related education. There are many organizations that are building bottom up organically in different countries that create pressure or create demand for for business schools to have more sustainability, related programs courses and material. So there is a strong demand on one hand on the other. Ivy has always had a very strong supply, meaning that I v was one of the first to establish Sustancia Center. We have great leaders, academic leaders at I v from Timavas in strategy rock class and in operations is and Conrad inequalities on a bronze and social intrepreter, and this process been at Ivy for about twentyyears and they have attracted new faculty over time with a focus on suspendit such as myself and many of my colleagues. So as we see this demand increasing, we just have content and material to share with students, and so we just provided to ide publishing the capabilities that were needed in order to to assess the s djs and and provide resources that other instructors could then leverage a few numbers. If I may, we have increased our you know: Investment Introducing IV cases that are more sustenation Ed, but the analysis that we are conducting the tagging exercise is showing that many of the cases that we were used to produce still have an s dg focus of some sort. So out of five hundred and forty six studies case studies that we reviewed recently a hundred and sixty three, so thirty percent already included at least one s dg some asge are more cover than others who number ten. Eight and twelve are covered by many cases. There are some others that instead we need to be more careful of a D and direct our investments in those directions. These are SD. Fourteen one, two, six and eleven and what's interesting, is that of some of these cases actually cover more than one s dg, and so the the cases can be useful to ampatheater dependences between different elements of sustainability and some other cases that are focused on specific, as the G so allow you to go deeper on one on one one specific talking yeah, I'm really glad that you brought up some of the numbers and what I'm you know excited for the the publishing standpoint of this is that you know we're looking into our collection of what what we've done previously, but then also really looking ahead. So it's exciting to see the energy going into this and then, of course, we get to see where all these cases go and are used internationally, and I know two of the recent cases you know additions to the sustainability collection have been offered by you, so we've got N W Canada serving great taste with minimal waste and HP Canada Co a circular supply chain for recycle plastic, great disease submitting. So thanks for submitting cases because they all go towards the goal of getting this information out to the world. Can you briefly describe these cases and how they impart sustainability related lessons to the to not only the individual student but to the to the schools that they go up to? I love these cases and by the way they were the result of a collaboration with out Er colleagues and I v and beyond so the HP was developing collaboration with my colleague that I should leave and the Awks was devoting collaboration with another colic Ad Odesia business school. So the HB case challenges students to trade off complex strategic and operational decisions that must be faced and made to develop a competitive circular supply gin for plastic. It focuses on HP goals to have thirty percent post consumer recycle plastic across their personal systems and printers by two thousand and twenty five. By the way they just came out with another announcement that they will try to get to seventy percent post consumer recycle plastic in their products by two thousand and thirty, which is as a huge world an Afrit. The problem is that virgin plastic is still very cheap, and so how can you remain competitive if you promise to produce products that contain recycle content? And you start at a disadvantage? So how do you set up a supply chain that takes back pass consumer waste to turn it into new products in a way that can compete with dirty materials and the producers of Virgin materials that don't account for externalities that don't account for the impact that they have on the environment? The case really allows to cover about fifteen years the amount of time that was needed for HP to Develerpin and it ends in the beginning of two thousand and twenty when the coved head and the price of Virgin Plastic, plum, and so at that point, H, p was losing a lot of money out of using recycle plastic. As so, the question is: What do we do for our long? Can we continue what strategies and tactics can we put in place to remain competitive? So I think that's a great case and obviously I worked on it but H. another very good case is the awks which focuses on on a ubiquitous problem. The problem of Coffee Cups, Dis, possible coffee cups. We drink coffee, we love it and yet, when you walk around in the street, you see cups from a number of brands that to pull you the environment and so n w had a tradition into sustainability and reusing. So historically, they avoided Tis possible coffee cups and used reusable coffee cups in their shops, whoever, because of the pandemic again, we started to do more, take outs and there were health issues related to reusing, because sanitation and cleaning standards have to be changed, and so they experienced a dramatic increase in the packaging and disposable packaging that they were using and felt the responsibility to work on it. So the case reviews a number of cups options that an have to consider and pushes the students to think about this decision making process what criteria, what economic criteria would you use to select among these caps? What operational implications a different cap would have for your for your for your restaurants, what are the environmental implications of different cups? And so, along this conversation, the student can first of all understand how to develop a decision making framework and second of all, as they do that they realize there are a number of trade offs that they need to consider not just between economic and environmental performance, meaning the cheapest cap is usually the most emperoar polluting, but also between environmental criteria. For example, there are some cups made of paper. There are much more polluting upstream during the production process, but if they get disposed improperly, they don't pull you the environment. So you are, you know. If you choose a paper based material, then it's detrempe, but less impactful downstream. If you choose a plastic material, is less atome, Tal absteen, because its very efficiently produced, but is incredibly detrimental downstream if it leakages to the environment. You know we know, we all know about micro plastic, so they learn how to first of all identify these trade offs and then think about ways to overcome this, and then you also developed a case with Wawa, which is again a great brand. I love it when, as a publisher, we see brands that we recognize that are timely. Could you talk a little bit about about that case? Absolutely that was published one year ago and it takes a more network perspective on sustainability. As a scholar, I work a lot with supply chains, which are essentially large networks of players, and this case reviews are fifteen years journey through which Walwa as try to improve the sustainability of their large supply network, and we are talking about thousands of suppliers that are all collocated in China. So the case is useful to review different tactics that a large organization can use to influence suppliers in terms of their environmental and social practices, something that I think that case is clear, because it's a case of failure, unfortunately- and we don't get to talk too much about failures in case that is because companies want want, reveal those failers. But this one is interesting, because why we with a good goal to increase US tenability, has tried to come up with an initiated that was called best. Future supplier form, which is essentially a an online platform that allows suppliers to self assess themselves on a number of sustenation, and the platform would gather all this data would do bench marking and would return automatic feedback to to the suppliers and give them badges from gold, platinum, silver, bronze on different dimensions. So that this supplier would know where they have to improve and and also feel sort of, a competition with other supplie, so that the platform could stimulate or raise the top that didn't work. Essentially, it wasn't creating the change that he was supposed to and the case trigger that question. Why is he not working? What what do we have to do to improve sustainability in a network of thousands of supplies? And I really like that- you mentioned that this is a kind of an exciting case, because it does talk about failure and I love to see those come through, because it's it's something. It's sometimess easy to find those examples of where somebody's successful and goes on and a project wins, for example, but having one where there are challenges is great to see in our library. You know what else do you think about? First and foremost, when writing a sustainability case does, does it differ from writing an operations case or a general management case, walk us through how you think about writing yeah. So my reaction will be that the process itself does not defer much. I would still try to focus on a very timely organization and topic and try to create a number of beneficial outcomes for different stakeholders involved in the case. So, first, I think about myself. I'm egoistic, I think about what can I learn from this case? What is what is a novel about the context about the issue or about the solution? Because I want to continue to learn, and I want to continue to sort of use case studies to maybe feed ideas into my research. Then I frame the case as an opportunity for the company to think about and properly frame a Silian problem that they have to deal with in the short term, and so I approach them with with this idea to create a safe space for them to investigate a problem that they are struggling with, and the fact that students often are exposed to this problem through the case. It's a good motive motivator for companies because they like to pick on the collective bride minds of our students to solve the problem and then obviously think about students. What is it that they can learn in terms of problems and Mageria solutions? The more I think about the question that you asked the more I came to realize that there is maybe one key difference between a sustainability case and in a traditional case, is the level of complexity and focus in a sus sustainability. s about systems is about intended and unintended consequences is about complex tradas between different take all the groups between the natural environment, profit making or profit OPLANTI and society. It usually requires to have many more notion, concepts and frameworks to be embedded within the case in order for an insightful conversation to unfold. So a traditional case will be focused on one concept. One issue: one framework, a sustainability case instead often speak to and can be formed by a number of concepts, theories and and notions and and knowledge learning points, and so it makes the you know the in class experience. The case can go on many different ways, which is always great as a student to to have that experience, but I also want to reinforce something that you said about. You know you look at. How can it inform new research ideas and that's been a theme? That's come up on this podcast. A number of times is that relationship between you know cases coming out of research or cases in forming research, so that kind of back and forth, or the way that it can feed each other is great that you mention that, because it is a theme that's coming up over and over and something not to be overlooked. So I'd like you to kind of peer forward into the future, if you might, what does the future look like for sustainability in business education? Thinking ahead, I think there is. There are gaps that we need to to close quickly. There are many courses around the world on Digital Ization, strategic decision making operations, but I think there is great demand around topics such as circular economy, climate change system, thinking, system, innovation, so I think we need to quickly move towards offering cases, courses, programs and diploma that tackle very explicitly this. This topics, because there are informational, needs out there that are currently not met. The way to meet them will be to provide, in my opinion, a combination of options from from short courses that are more executive, oriented to longer programs that are more specific to sustainability and perhaps specific topical issues within sustainability. All of them should be should be based on, I believe, a combination of three factors: they should use applied, meaning case based, but theoretically informed readings, videos and class discussions, because sustainability is really practical, pragmatic, yet you can theorize on it, but but still there are practical implications that we need to discuss and explore. Second is a focus on a key sustainability issue and challenge. I think sustainability is such a large and ever evolving concept that the program the course need to bring focus. What are we talking about here? Clamat Change, owl. Does it manifest where it come from? How can we tackle it? This questions would have different answers if we focus on issues of social justice and inequality. So I think the course or the program need to be focused around a specific subset of Sustento issues and challenges, and then it has to compliment the in class learning, with experiential learning from internship challenges, workshops and perhaps applied research courses, which I do very often with my students where they take a research project on for credit. So again the students need to learn from the instructor from the material from their peers and, most importantly, from business leaders that are currently dealing with very difficult questions. I think we need applied meaning case based material that is theoretically informed and can rely upon readings, videos but also class discussions. I think that this material need to be very focused on specific sustainability issues, because dealing with different issues were required to considering different theoretical lenses, and I also think that everything should be complimented by experiential learning from internship to challenges, workshops, but even research courses with my students. I very often offer them a research projects for credit, and this re research project. They can be deeper into specific issues and work with companies to understand our desists play out, and how can they eventually be a result? Now, one of the things that a you know the benefit of having a podcast like this is we can encourage the listener to go on and look at other resources or dive into other cases, and I know that you're doing some work in guelf. That has a number of resources available. You know, could you talk about things you outside of the cases that you've written, where you'd really encourage the listener to go to learn more about the subject? Thank you for the question. So we are working with our food future and and Coil in Canada to to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy or for food. There will be a number of technical reports that will come out early in two thousand and twenty two from from that exercise, I would also suggest to look at the cases of a colleague of mind, dishing Ley, which I really think she's a great writer and a great researcher, but also a great case writer. There are especially to that. I would recommend they exist. They are very well known, but none the less I like to do some publicity here. I think the Ermanno case on a ermanno decided to switch from PEPs to more recyclable plastic materials and their products, and one that maybe is less known. That, I think is, is a great learning. Experience is a poly face, the form of many faces, and especially this case breaks down and compares the operations of of a farm that has multiple type of animals from cattle to pigs and chickens and produces different type of outputs. It compares this setting with the more industrial setting that is highly specialized and and there's no corporal achan involved, but is only focused on one product at the time, so crop protection, meat, production and and the craze is great, because you can learn that the mole system that is more complex and multi product can actually compete with the industrial system, but not based on economical scale, but rather on economies of scope, which is a great learning exercise. So is there anything before we wrap up today that you want to leave the listener with and courage them to do or to look at anything about the cates collections, sustainability or the circular economy that you really want to hit home with the listener? Yeah? Absolutely so, I'm working a lot on repurposing food loss and waste. Please check out our website. We have just implement an an interactive map, then you can use in your courses, and the map shows all the business to business, wast exchanges that we have been able to track in the last two or three years. It gives you the material that is used. What is used for when the exchange happen, and it shows how the circular economy network is evolving over time o. So please use it and get back to us with any feed like that's great, and is I love to see things that are going to continue to evolve with the participation of the community, and I want to thank you for the work that you're doing and the cases that you've published the. Obviously, our collaboration is always a lot of fun and can't wait to see some of the outputs of this, but, moreover, as we talked about the work that you and your colleagues are doing, to equip the future leaders to think about challenges like this and to think in ways that not only bolster the business but the communities and the environments that they're working in. So thank you so much for for joining us today and for the work that you're doing. Thank you. I'd be publishing and thank you matt for Airport Invitation. If you enjoy today's episode subscribe to Decision Point On spotify or wherever you listen to be sure, to check out the show notes for links to cases, resources and more have any feedback, send us an email at cases at IV, dot, CA, t