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By transforming a commodity into a luxury product, Nespresso has made billions in sales with its coffee pods. The company of the Swiss multinational Nestlé has annual sales of CHF 5.9 billion (US $ 6.3 billion).

However, Nespresso has been heavily criticized for the environmental impact of the aluminum capsules that land in landfills because the metal is not biodegradable. However, it can be recycled.

Nespresso reached out to NYU Stern School of Business in New York to create a bespoke executive course, running for most of the years since 2016, to help employees understand the sustainability of coffee. There were 118 participants from different levels of the company and what they learned has already helped improve recycling rates.

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Participants visit a coffee farm in Costa Rica to understand the company’s sustainable sourcing program, launched in 2003 by the Rainforest Alliance, an environmental organization. They also take business courses, teach consumers about brand storytelling in court, and are encouraged to come up with proposals for projects as part of the course – for example, ways to reduce waste in Nespresso offices.

“Visiting the farm is an insightful, emotional experience that gives the employees context and an appreciation for what they are doing,” says Alfonso Gonzalez Loeschen, Managing Director of Nespresso North America. “They now see the business from a different perspective and not only look at the finances, but also the social and environmental impact of their decisions. They challenge the way we do business. “

Nespresso employees spend three days on coffee farms in Costa Rica

Participants now see the business through a different lens. They challenge the way we do business

Participants, primarily in customer-facing roles, helped encourage participation in Nespresso’s US recycling program with delivery company UPS, and encouraged consumers to return used cores to 88,000 drop-off points across the country. Nespresso employees also showed customers products forged from recycled shells, including an edition of the Victorinox Swiss Army Knife. This helped increase the recycling rate for US pods from 17 to 32 percent between 2016 and 2020. The global rate is 30 percent.

Loeschen is not alone: ​​Executives in companies around the world are increasingly under pressure to tackle social, ecological and ethical problems. The Covid-19 pandemic has fueled the debate about the purpose of a business and has led some to enlist the help of business schools to build more inclusive business models.

After the 2008 financial crisis, some critics labeled business schools “academies of the apocalypse” and argued that they were partially at fault. However, many institutions go beyond the shareholder model and emphasize the longer-term interests of employees and society in their executive education programs to encourage organizations to become better corporate citizens.

The pandemic forced people to reflect on their responsibilities, use privileges and positions of power to do good

This month, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is launching a new course on integrating sustainability into a business strategy. Robert Strand, executive director of the Haas Center for Responsible Business, says the pandemic has put “stakeholder capitalism on steroids”. It “exposed and exacerbated inequalities, but it is also an opportunity to change the narrative of capitalism and redefine the purpose of an enterprise,” he added.

Scientists disagree on whether the coronavirus will really reset capitalism, but there is a great appetite for executive courses beyond the bottom line. Nicholas Pearce, professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois, says many leaders are interested in using companies as a platform for social change. “The pandemic forced people to think about their responsibilities, use privileges and positions of power to do good,” he says.

According to Pearce, Kellogg’s corporate customers are increasingly demanding tailored programs focused on social causes, employee wellbeing, and diversity and inclusion. Likewise, Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School, agrees that the demand for such training has exceeded the supply. “Coronavirus has awakened the” S “in” ESG “,” he says, reflecting a rethinking by companies, especially on social issues, alongside environmental and governance factors.

Last year, Ioannou launched an online program for sustainability management and corporate responsibility at LBS, in which four times as many executives were enrolled as expected. Ione Anderson, a nonprofit manager and serial entrepreneur Ricardo Assumpção, met on the course last year. Both signed up in response to the pandemic and were inspired to start Grape ESG – a sustainability consultancy in Brazil – shortly after graduating.

The couple say they gained clients with the knowledge from the course, including the strong business case for ESG. A 2018 study by Axioma, an analytics firm, found that companies with superior ESG scores reported improved financial performance and outperformed the broader stock market. “The way we sell our services is based entirely on what we learned at the business school,” says Assumpção, Managing Director of Grape ESG. In addition, the program provided a framework for carrying out a sustainability assessment of a company. “It gives us a better understanding of the external pressures and risks organizations face,” said Anderson, chief operations officer.

Tensie Whelan, director of the Center for Sustainable Business at NYU Stern, says many executives want help navigating the “alphabet soup” of standards that companies use to measure their sustainability efforts. Acquiring these and other skills is “the next wave of good management,” she suggests.

Whelan says that purpose and gain can go hand in hand. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Professor of Corporate Sustainability at ESCP Business School in Berlin, agrees, saying that schools are facing a difficult balancing act between teaching social causes and satisfying the demand for traditional skills like finance. “The challenge is to respond to the public perception that we are the bad guys who drive profit maximization, blamed for our role in the 2008 financial crisis – without alienating customers or being accused of greenwashing,” he says.

While many business schools still face resistance to change in corporate customers, Whelan and others emphasize the importance of their role in undermining claims that sustainability affects financial performance. “We debunk myths,” she says.