From: Why Smart Managers Will Capitalize on Sustainability First

 

Q: Can you elaborate on the correlation between sustainability and competitive advantage?

Yeah. Efficiency (lower unit costs), quality, reliability -- often these "positive" attributes of companies go hand in hand, managers will tell you. Now think about sustainability. If companies are good at developing systems that deal with health and safety, and/or treating waste and water, and/or devising innovative ways to reduce energy consumption and so forth, they usually have their act together on many other, fundamental, how-they-do-business fronts. In other words, companies that have thought hard about how to establish various management systems that promote more sustainable business practices are also companies that have thought hard about how to be more efficient or innovative or differentiate their products and services in the market.

Sustainability becomes a proxy for management quality. This is a quick way for others, be they buyers or customers or potential partners, to get information about vendors or any other value-chain partner and what kinds of systems they have. And that makes sense to me, absolutely.