“We clearly need more managers to understand how the Earth’s ecological systems work.”
A recent study by the Stockholm Resilience Centre shows that seven out of nine planetary boundaries are now breached. These include climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, novel entities, and ocean acidification.
Basically, this means that we are damaging our planet’s ecological systems more than ever, and that this will, as environmental scientists have been saying for years, conclusively lead to catastrophic consequences on life itself.
In one of my management and organization lectures, one of the reflection questions I require my students to answer is: How important is it for managers to acquire a basic understanding of how the Earth’s ecological systems work? The question was taken from our management textbook, which covers the importance of financial, social, and ecological well-being.
The question is highly appropriate, given the current state of the world’s affairs today. While most of us are engrossed with the social issues in our respective countries, from anti-immigration sentiments in USA, Germany, and Japan, down to the immense corruption scandals in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines, we are forgetting one of the bigger issues that threaten human life itself: environmental collapse.
The answer to the question, at least from my perspective, is straightforward. Due to the current state of the world today, we clearly need more managers to understand how the Earth’s ecological systems work. This should be done not just as a form of appreciation, but as a starting point to collectively influence decision-making within organizations, most especially at the executive and board levels.
Meanwhile, my students say that managers need to understand the Earth’s ecological systems because sustainable business practices are now closely tied to profit, and not doing so would ultimately harm the business’ financial bottom line. In informal terms: a burning planet is bad for business.
For us in the developing world, it might seem like a pipe dream trying to address these environmental issues. We are, after all, handicapped for generations by many social and economic issues. Needless to say, we are at a very limited capacity when it comes to protecting our environment. Some would also argue that we have the famous Filipino resilience anyway, so we “should not be worried”.
But these things should not be an excuse for inaction. One aspect we have to remember is that managers are not just found in revenue-generating organizations, but in all forms of organizations.
Whether you are a manager or have a management-related role in a business, church, government building, or police station, there is value in learning about the importance of the environment (e.g., proper waste disposal, energy-efficient usage of equipment and appliances, and conscious water consumption, to name a few). These actions help add up to a bigger whole, enabling sustainable impact at scale.
These small actions also appear great on paper and sustainability reports, but it should not just end there. The leaders of organizations also have a responsibility to understand and act on environmental issues, because only then can we have a larger scale impact.
Pope Leo XIV himself, the leader of the entire Catholic Church, made his first major statement on climate change: “God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created for the benefit of all and for future generations, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters — what will be our answer, my dear friends?”
Climate change and all the other planetary boundaries are not foreign events. In the Philippines, we experience this on a regular basis, especially during the typhoon season. We need voices from leaders like Pope Leo XIV who understand what’s at stake, and leaders who acknowledge the fact that we are now at a point where it is getting harder and harder to restore what is already lost. By doing so, we will know how to move forward without making so many blind and uncalculated promises.
When someone asks if the environment is an important consideration in organizations, I hope our collective answer to that is yes, it is, without reservation.
Ian Benedict R. Mia is a part-time lecturer at the Department of Management and Organization of De La Salle University (DLSU). He works full-time as a Sustainability Researcher at one of the top ESG Ratings firms globally. He can be reached at ianbrmia@gmail.com.
The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty, and its administrators.
