Behind the Mars Bar: looking deeper for sustainable food companies

Mars is the world’s largest privately owned food company with $30 billion in revenues and more than 65,000 workers around the world in 2012. It produced its first ever sustainability report recently in 2011. It was also one of the first big companies to deliver its CSR report on Facebook.

In a refreshing claim to appreciating longer time frames Paul Michaels writes in Mars's Five Principles report:  “As a private company governed by the Mars family, we think in terms of generations, not quarterly returns.” But the company does not take the step of recognising natural times scales.

Mars do have a high impact upon farming practices so adopting natural time scales would not be out of place in the company. Mars does after all call for a joint industry effort to scale up positive impacts for cocoa farmers and achieve higher yields without compromising limited natural resources so longer, more natural time scales are definitely required.

But perhaps the most significant step that Mars have taken lies in their Five Principles report. As one of the five principles, Mars have adopted Mutuality which they describe as follows:

·         A mutual benefit is a shared benefit; a shared benefit will endure.

·         We believe the standard by which our business relationships should be measured is the degree to which mutual benefits are created.

·         These benefits can take many different forms, and need not be strictly financial in nature. Likewise, while we must try to achieve the most competitive terms, the actions of Mars should never be at the expense, economic or otherwise, of others with whom we work.

According to Mars, the mutual benefits need not be financial in nature and yet they are to be the standard by which their business relations should be measured. Indeed rummaging around their website reveals a wealth measured in non-financial benefits including the sponsorship of science.

So how is Mars able to recognise these revolutionary steps in business management? At one level there is a simple answer that all companies can implement and that is they pay full attention to the knowledge we now possess of the world in which we live. A new Primal possibility of knowledge is present in the world and we are slowly taking advantage of all its exciting opportunities to make the world a better place.

The other answer is not so simple and it is likely few major companies can implement it in their present form. It is an answer that has to do with Keynes’ 1933 article on National Sufficiency:  “But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation,” (see The Accountant’s Economic Revolution in the PR blog, 25^th November 2012).

Mars is a private company. It does not have to worry about maintaining a position in the financial markets. In this sense Mars has greater freedom to adapt to the emerging Primal knowledge of our world; it is not for example constrained by overweening and restricting notions of Modern good financial performance. But Mars does have remote operations created and maintained throughout its supply chain; it therefore needs to ensure that the dictates of financial performance do not reduce overall Mutuality to considerations of dominant economic aspects.

Oxfam is more critical of Mars. In its assessment of the Big 10 food companies, Oxfam ranks Mars with a 30% score which is a “Poor” performance lying in fifth place behind Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pepsico. Middle-ranking Mars received low scores with regards to supporting women and protecting land rights, but did better with transparency and small-scale farmers. 

Big 10 Food Companies Sustainability Scorecard
Taken from Oxfam's "Behind the Brands" Report

Get Real! –John Gray on Capitalism’s Delusions

John Nicholas Gray (1948 -) is a former London School of Economics and Political Science Professor. He is a well-published author of books and he contributes regularly to the UK national press including the Guardian newspaper.

John Gray promotes realistic thinking: “The meltdown of financial markets has done more than wipe out wealth on an unprecedented scale. It has also destroyed the neo-liberal belief in progress through ever expanding production and consumption, and an anxious search is under way for a replacement creed. Religious fundamentalism is one result of this quest, Green utopianism another. Intelligent improvisation – using technical fixes to reduce the human impact on the Earth, for example – is more likely to yield results that the search for solutions. But realistic thinking goes against the grain. It is easier to inhabit an imaginary future than deal with the intractable present.” (Gray 2009, p. xxv).

The above quotation was written in 2009 in a new preface to his book “False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism” which was first published in 1998. Gray’s 1998 prophetic vision on the delusions of global capitalism was proved to be correct one decade after publication.

In “False Dawn” Gray had argued that the effect of unrestricted international free enterprise will be socially and culturally destructive. It is also unsustainable. But Gray cannot be classified as a Green, as anti-growth, or as a return-to-nature thinker. Indeed Gray argues that a Green agenda, an anti-growth recognition of physical limits and a natural utopia are not tenable. He also argues not for sustainable development but for a “sustainable retreat”. (ibid.).

If Gray is against free enterprise, greens and sustainable development, what is it precisely that he does want?

Professor John Gray

John Gray wants realism; a knowledge and action undistorted by utopian ideals and beliefs. In particular he wants to rid the world of the propaganda that free markets are a natural state of human affairs. This is also a core argument of Primal Reporter.

 In “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals”, John Gray (2002) challenges what it means to be human. He thereby touches upon another key PR idea – that the world is changing, and a new world, or episteme (Foucault 1970), is emerging. The book “Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability” (Birkin and Polesie 2011) is about the emerging episteme.

By referring to a new world, we have not of course found a new geographical expanse to enter. However, it is arguable that PR’s new world is an even more momentous event than that. What makes our knowledge possible is changing; and this changes what we know of the world and of ourselves. In this way a whole new world is made available to explore and with that all the thrills and opportunities of pioneering and discovery. Professor John Gray is yet another a harbinger of this change.

References

Birkin, F.K., and Polesie, T.  Intrinsic Sustainable Development: Epistemes, Science, Business and Sustainability. Singapore, World Scientific Press.

Foucault, M. (1989[1970]). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London, Routledge.

Gray, J. (2002). Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. London, Granta.

Gray, J. (2009[1998]). False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London, Granta.

Sustainable Business Model: Recognising the Relations

A first step in developing a sustainable business model is being able to see business for what it is. If we conceive of a business in monetary terms - as monetary accounting and finance does - then we fail to recognise the rich set of non-monetary relations that are essential to maintaining a business.

In the past when businesses were conceived in only monetary terms and their success was measured crudely as extra money created, business managers and owners could become systematically blinded to the social and environmental harm their businesses caused. Back in 19th century Victorian England when the country was being industrialised, the negative social impact of business was so bad that Karl Marx dedicated his life to fight against business, the capitalists as he named them. Marx of course developed a political ideology to which China still adheres.

In our own times, businesses that do not recognise their social, environmental and ecological impacts are a major cause of unsustainable development. This is a well known fact. There are many initiatives that try and make businesses formally recognise more of the relations upon which their (and our) long-term survival depends - whether the managers and owners see the relations or not. These initiatives include: the Global Reporting Initiative, Environmental Management Accounting,  the UN Global Compact 2010-2012, KPMG Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, SustainAbility 2008 Guidelines and the growing number of sectoral reporting schemes in such as Mining and Metals, Food Processing, NGOs, Airports, Apparel & Footwear, Construction & Real Estate, Events, Logistics & Transportation, Media, Oils & Gas, and Telecommunications.

This approach is to be admired since it marks a potential sea-change in the way we assess and value business performance. However this approach does not get to the root cause of the problem. It does not provide an alternative conception of what business relations really are: instead this approach attempts to take the traditional narrow monetary concept of a business and add-on other relations. This creates many problems among which the question of boundaries is paramount.

If we do not provide a fresh core-concept of what a business really is and attempt to advance sustainability by reporting alone, then we loose sight of what the business boundaries are. This is an inevitable consequence which is analogous to trying to alter the direction airplanes take by looking at and reporting on their slipstreams.

What are the boundaries of business sustainability reporting?
(Van Wensen et al. 2011, p. 108)

Instead of “chasing tails” and trying to make the world more sustainable with reports alone, we can redefine a business at its core. We can rethink what we now know about business activity - and add back those relations that were not recognised in businesses 200 hundred years ago when their foundations were laid. We can now recognise that a business, any business, is part of complex social, environmental and ecological relations as well as economic; and we can redesign a business so that it does - as a matter of routine - add value to all these relations.

Reference

Van Wensen, K., Broer, W., Klein, J., and Knopf, J. (2011). “The State of play in Sustainability Reporting in the European Union.” CREM B.V. and Adelphi Consult., Brussels: European Union.

The Emerging World

By changing the foundation for knowledge, we change knowledge of the world in which we live…. This is as good as changing the world itself.

Whilst it is easy to write and understand how the world may change in this way; it is not at all easy to live through such a change. The reason why this is so difficult is because we have so much knowledge and understanding derived from the old world. It is not so much the big ideas that we find difficult to change: it is the small, everyday, assumptions that we hold to be true about our world and about ourselves that keep us embedded at heart in the old world.

Children may be more easily introduced to the new world – indeed children always enter a new world, one of our and their creation. Students too may vigorously enquire and challenge the world in which they are growing intellectually. But nonetheless the established world, the world that is embedded in existing institutions, practices, cultures and beliefs is hard to displace.

In the ISD book (Intrinsic Sustainable Development, World Scientific Press, 2011) the two main characters take a life-time to leave the old world and discover a little about the new. The book is in this way a journey through knowledge; it is also a journey through the physical world. In the following extract from the book these two characters, the older boy and Grey Beard, are in Helsinki, Finland. They take the 14.10 ferry from the jetty at Skatuddskajen to the island fortress of Suomenlinna, a world heritage site.

“The Older Boy had Diagrams

In the plastic sleeves that now lay inside the cases of QC and Grey Beard were a series of diagrams and notes. They had been taken directly from teaching material that the older boy had used to illustrate the development of the Primal episteme and its consequences to management and accounting undergraduates.

In Figure 1 the older boy had wanted to show something of ‘Worlds in Transition’. He used this diagram to provide a basis for discussions. It was based on Venn diagrams in which the area occupied by an item was representative of the importance of that item.

Adapted Venn diagrams showing how the world of business is changing

The first part of Figure 1 shows the Inherited Business World in which an important, white businessman (for the older boy also intended to draw attention to the dominance of males in establishing traditional business practice) in a large, hence important, self-made area. The Natural World is located at a distance — quite separate from the Inherited Business world. The area of the traditional business world has a regular, formal shape to represent a little of its assumed certainty and control.

The second part of Figure 1 shows the Business and Environment World in which we currently live. The Natural World has here grown in importance but it has been transformed into the Environment. It overlaps the Business World in the small oval of environmental economics and business but much of the Inherited Business World remains unaffected.

The third part of Figure 1 shows the older boy’s vision of the emerging world of Primal Business in an Economic Ecology. Here, the Business World has been embedded in the ecosystem and the areas defined by all worlds have become uncertain and irregular. In this

part, the older boy introduced non-whites and females to represent increasing diversity of participants and the end of the dominance of the white businessman.”

The emerging world is based on the scientific knowledge that we now possess. This knowledge is very different from that which was available when the old world was established. It is time to move on.