Timberland in Conversation with Marlboro MBA students

 

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Timberland has indeed utilized Ceres%u2019 2006 publication "Managing the Risks and Opportunities of Climate Change: A Practical Toolkit for Corporate Leaders" in forming our own climate strategy. We have gone through the 10 steps within the Assess, Implement, and Disclose & Engage model internally and also discussed our strategy with climate experts, practitioners, NGO leaders and investors at our July 2007 Stakeholder Summit (which specifically brought together these multi-stakeholder parties to give guidance on the development of our comprehensive strategy). In particular, some highlights of our current climate work that fits into the guidance offered in this model include:



1. Creating a climate management team within our company, which is managed by our Environmental Stewardship staff but also reporting to Executive Leadership and a multi-disciplinary committee within the company to review strategy and resources. Ultimately, our strategy is reviewed by Timberland%u2019s the CSR Committee on our Board of Directors.



2. Setting aggressive GHG emission reduction targets such as targeting a 50% reduction by 2010 over our 2006 baseline, and disclosing our GHG Inventory and progress towards such goals in our quarterly and annual CSR reporting.



3. Advocating for mandatory climate legislation through groups like BICEP.

 

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Timberland%u2019s primary drivers for stakeholder engagement relate to our transparency and accountability philosophy. Transparency enables us to engage in candid dialogue with stakeholders and helps us build trust with these partners and critics. They often help us deepen our understanding of Timberland%u2019s impact on the world and help advance our approach to environmental stewardship and social justice. We also believe that as a public entity we must adhere to a set of standards in order to receive our license to operate. By setting public targets for reducing our impacts on the people and environment around us, we provide opportunity for stakeholders to track our progress over time.



One way that we gauge investor interest and support for our sustainability efforts is through our recently launched Quarterly CSR Dialogues. These calls are hosted by our CEO and a key expert in the topic area we are discussing (previous calls have been about community greening, eco-labeling, responsible sourcing, etc.). These calls are open to the public and anyone is able to listen in. We began hosting these calls in 2008 to complement our quarterly reporting. Both activities demonstrate Timberland%u2019s aspiration to manage and communicate our CSR performance in the same way we manage and communicate the company%u2019s financial performance.

 

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Yes thank you Beth! The class, as a mix of reality and acting, has been a lot of fun. I am learning more than I ever thought about Timberland, to say nothing about stakeholder engagement itself. I look forward to meeting you in a couple weeks. My questions that arose out of your conference call presentation are:

For Timberland, what are the primary drivers for engaging stakeholders?

How does Timberland gauge investor interest in/support for, its sustainability endeavor?

 

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In representing a CERES Investor Network on Climate Risk program manager as part of the Marlboro CPN stakeholder dialogue, my project is to filter Timberland's sustainability initiatives through the INCR toolkit to help corporate leaders and directors address the strategic and financial challenges associated with global climate change. My quick question is has Timberland already engaged in this exercise? Any feedback would be fantastic.

 

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Thanks to Beth for inviting Marlboro MBA students in the Communications, Persuasion, and Negotiation (CPN) course to engage directly with Timberland here on JustMeans as stakeholders. The CPN course is using Timberland's web 2.0 stakeholder engagement and sustainability reporting as a case study throughout the entire course. We just enacted a stakeholder dialogue role-play where students represented different stakeholders, from CalPERS to ICCR to Ceres to BP Solar to Timberland facility and product and communications managers.



We are now in the process of transforming the outcomes of the dialogue into "real-world" projects, such as a proposal for BP Solar to partner with Timberland on solar installations to a board report responding to the dialogue to a proposal for 3rd party verification of Timberland's sustainability reporting to an "intrapreneurial" proposal for Timberland to address the environmental impacts of its leather sourcing.



I'm excited to see how this dialogue develops, and also excited for Beth's visit to our class and to give a talk to the community at the Marlboro College Graduate School campus in Brattleboro, Vermont, on Friday, March 27!



Bill Baue

Adjunct Professor, Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability

Executive Producer/Host, Sea Change Radio

Contributing Writer, CSRwire.com