Promoting sustainability

Building on the case of Schneider Electric, this chapter adopts a leadership lens to explore the organizational and societal drivers of company engagement in corporate sustainability and social responsibility, as well as the factors that lead companies to engage in unsustainable and irresponsible practices. Multinational companies can be a force for good and prevent harmful consequences for stakeholders by acting responsibly in the social, environmental, governance, and economic domains. In a fragmented world - threatened by the ravages of inequality, accelerating climate change, and geopolitical conflict - corporate leaders in multinational firms must take actions that drive positive change. We then explore the organizational management implications, discussing how multinational companies implement their sustainability strategies in different national contexts and how they balance local and global demands when confronted with complex societal and environmental issues, highlighting the tensions and trade-offs. This leads us to outline the people management strategies and practices that help such firms promote sustainability and corporate responsibility, addressing complex societal challenges by aligning their activities with the needs of a broad range of stakeholders. The chapter, and the book, concludes with a discussion of the ever-increasing pressures facing multinational firms, presenting three challenges that are worth fighting for, notably the importance of bringing purpose back into the center of the picture, as shown in our people management wheel.