Howard Burton - Saving the World at Business School: A Conversation with Andy Hoffman

A friend of mine has long argued that there is an inverse relationship between the popularity of a word and its meaning. The trendier a word has become, he says, the fuzzier it is, until eventually its used everywhere and means nothing.

Sustainability seems a perfect example for his theory. Once a word primarily associated with dour environmentalists, its hard to think of someone these days who does not avidly chatter away about its merits. Politicians of all stripes routinely vie to outdo one another to demonstrate their sustainability credentials. Corporations now have Chief Sustainability Officers. We are all sustainability advocates now, it would appear. But what, in fact, are we actually talking about?

Not much, in fact.

Into this yawning semantic void steps Andy Hoffman. A popular professor at one of Americas elite business schools, Hoffman might seem an odd choice to be the driving force for a fundamental re-interpretation of the green lexicon.

But a closer examination shows that hes spent the majority of his career searching for constructive and practical ways to develop mutually beneficial common ground between the forces of capitalism and environmentalism. He is, after all, the Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.

Theres that word again.

But Andy, to his credit, keeps pushing our understanding of what it actually means.

However vague it might be, he told me, our widespread invocation of sustainability is clearly a good thing. Once rejected from a position at a top-tier business school for being too focused on the environment, he has witnessed first-hand the evolution of the environmental movement as sustainability has moved into the mainstream.

But for Andy, that journey is only just beginning.

Now its time to discover Sustainability 2.0. Where do we have to go next? Theres been change to a certain point. But the problems continue to get worse and even more radical shifts are called for.

A radical shift is exactly what you might call the recent work he co-authored with his mentor John Ehrenfeld, Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability.

The book is a dialogue between the two experts, beginning with an analysis of the issues at play and concluding with a final chapter, Reasons to be Hopeful.

Throughout the conversation, Hoffman plays the straight man to Ehrenfelds more radical declarations. What is needed, Ehrenfeld avers, is not simply incremental improvements to help us preserve our status quo, but nothing less than a redefinition of our core values, a collective societal shift away from perpetual consumerism towards a deeper understanding of our place in the world.

To that end, a new definition of that oh-so-troubling word is presented. Sustainability, we are told, is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever.

As each aspect of this quasi-utopian announcement is examined, scrutinized and dissected in the cold light of day, I felt myself increasingly at sea. Being confronted by an unabashedly idealistic tract that boldly announces a clear road map for societal progress is one thingwe all need to be inspired from time to time.

But what on earth is the world coming to when these sorts of things are being written by two engineers, one of whom is a faculty member at a major American business school? Whats next? Disarmament pamphlets from the NRA? Vegetarian cookbooks by the French? Scandinavian samba videos?

The truth is that Ive never had a clear understanding of what happens inside business schools anyway. I knew that fees were high, and that their shiny, modern buildings were often populated with people with PhDs wearing suits, which has always struck me as vaguely oxymoronic. And, in stark contrast to the atmosphere pervading physics or philosophy departments, say, most business students seemed convinced that time spent there might well lead to an actual job.

That was about it.

And then there was the fact, of course, that all business students were superficial, morally-depraved, mindlessly-consuming sell-outs who were largely responsible for driving the planet to the brink of ecological destruction.

But this last point, I discovered when I had the chance to sit down and chat with Andy, needed a bit of a rethink.

Well, theres definitely a demographic you describe, but more and more students are coming into business schools because they want to make a positive change in the world and they see that business has the power base to do it. They see the potential opportunities.

When I first got into this, I wanted to try to teach students to go into companies and help them to see environmental issues as strategic opportunities. Now we have more and more students coming out and saying, I dont want to go into a company and teach them, I want to do it myself. Increasingly, young people are motivated by the idea of creating a company that can try to address social and environmental issues.

Theres also a focus now on the hybrid organization, the sort of organization that lives in the blurry space between the for-profit and nonprofit world. Were seeing more and more students who want to do that. They want to make a positive impact on the world and they see a business as a way to do it.

All very smoothly deliveredhe is a business professor, after all. But Andy Hoffman is clearly no ordinary guy in a suit. Before returning to do his PhD at MIT, he took 5 years off to become a carpenter and home builder, a story he detailed in his award-winning memoir Builders Apprentice.

And while its worth emphasizing that virtually all of the truly radical things offered up in Flourishing clearly spring from Ehrenfeld rather than his erstwhile student, its equally obvious that Andys strong resonance with his mentors views was a prime motivating force for the books creation in the first place.

I see John as a visionary. I see him as looking much further out than most of us can see. Hes a very deep thinker, hes been thinking about these issues for a long time and hes very philosophical.

What hes pointing out is where we need to go for the long term, that some things were focusing on now are not going to take us where we need to go. Yes, you can buy a compact fluorescent light bulb and screw it in. Thats great, youre reducing your energy load. But there are still a lot of materials that went into that: youre just making the production of light