Another of the sustainability big names, Marks & Spencer (M&S), demonstrates elements of the integral sustainability model . Whilst its activities aren’t always radically different from its competitors, indeed it is not a clear sustainability leader in major indexes monitoring the supermarket retailing category , the way it goes about it seems to be different.
Business insight
Plan A was launched in 2007 setting out 100 things the company would do by 2015 in the areas of waste, supply chain, climate change, health and sustainable raw materials. It is a clear and ambitious plan, easily accessible and putting accountability front and centre. It builds on many years of working in this area; its Marks & Start programme provided work placement and training to people from under represented labour groups, many of whom had been out of employment for extended periods. It involved actively engaging existing employees on how to mentor and work with people from diverse backgrounds.
Whilst on the face of it the categories chosen under Plan A and the precision with which updates are communicated may make it appear very systems and externally driven there is much within the program that appeals to individual and community values in order to drive behavioural change, not unlike its early programmes such as Marks & Start.
Transformation
Not unlike our previous case study on Ben and Jerry’s, M&S has also been doing a lot of work within its supply chain, a large area of impact and therefore risk and opportunity for a retailer. The diverse nature of the retail supply chain does not make this an easy feat.
Whilst frameworks like Fairtrade have been in place for a number of years building the scale required to take from beyond a niche product to M&S’s first goal of 10% of its clothing to come from Fairtrade takes a significant amount of resourcing and capacity building. If a process view alone is taken, given that similar activities are being undertaken by the likes of giants such as WalMart, it is unlikely that the degree of change is physically possible.
It is important to engage partners, suppliers and customers alike. A great example of how M&S has achieved this in another of its programmes is through its partnership with Oxfam. Together the organisations have established the Clothes Exchange designed to raise money for Oxfam’s work whilst reducing the one million tonnes of clothing that ends up in landfill in the UK each year, not to mention all of those items that end up in the landfill that is the back of our wardrobes!
The Exchange encourages people to donate clothing that they no longer wear. When an M&S item is donated it can be exchanged for a £5 M&S voucher. The clothing is then sold through Oxfam Charity shops to raise money for its work internationally.
Its promotion includes e-cards gently encouraging friends and family that it may be time to clean out and update the wardrobe. It links into cultural values of fashion and bases its messages on research as to why people hoard clothes or buy things they will never wear and uses online clips and other promotions with stylists to encourage recycling. It assumes a modernist worldview and appeals to these values as outlined in this edition’s CSR expert view .
The programme has now also been extended to soft furnishings and since 2008 has raised £2.5m for Oxfam’s charity work.
End game
Although initially seeming to take a very process view of how to make its operations more sustainable, on closer inspection many of the individual initiatives cleverly engage and encourage behavioural change by making customers and employees the heroes, encouraging, engaging and rewarding them for sustainable decisions. Its communications demonstrate an understanding of the prevailing cultural (We exterior ) and design and communicate programmes that encourage behaviours consistent with this (I exterior ) and the organisation’s own sustainability objectives.
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© Article 13 - April 2010
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