By Meredith Somers |MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter | December 13, 2021
Decades before environmental, social, and governance became the fast-growing investment area it is today, individual employees were creating sustainability opportunities in their organizations — leading a used book drive, or advocating for double-sided printer settings.
Over time, that handful of concerned employees spread into different departments within a company. Supply chain managers started to examine their companies’ sourcing, traceability, and relationships with distributors. Regulatory compliance roles began to emerge as laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were enacted, and government relations divisions turned their attention to managing lobbying dollars and community outreach.
But it wasn’t until the last 15 or 20 years when this shift from reactionary to proactive environmental practices became the norm, and a company’s sustainability was tied to its success, explainedBethany Patten, lecturer and senior associate director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan.
“Now there’s a whole set of roles and industries that have popped up around socially responsible investing and ESG,” Patten said.
Sustainability is no longer an afterthought in corporate strategy, Patten said, it’s embedded into every part of an organization. Even the public sector has realized this, she said, pointing to President Joseph Biden’s “whole-of-government” approach to the climate crisis.
“The tides have changed in terms of organizational design,” Patten said.
To reflect that change in companies, the MIT Sustainability Initiative shares with its students a matrix of where and what kinds of jobs are available in the field.
