Prof. René Jorna: 'We must not stick our heads in the sand with regard to social sustainability'

More and more organizations are trying to deal with their employees and society in a responsible way (in the jargon – Corporate Social Responsibility). This so-called social sustainability can also be measured nowadays – thanks to a method developed by a PhD student at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen. René Jorna, professor of Knowledge Management and Cognition, explains how organizations can profit from this method. ‘The most important thing is that we must not stick our heads in the sand, as was the case for ages with ecological sustainability.’

What exactly is meant by social sustainability? Jorna first points to the environmental discussion. ‘Sustainability is often linked to ecology. The use of fossil fuels, for example, is not sustainable. In just a few hundred years we have used up all the oil, gas and coal that took the earth millions of years to make. At some point it’ll run out, and that’ll probably be this century.’ But sustainability has a much broader meaning than that. ‘What it actually means is a system that is in balance with its environment.’ In this way an organization can also be sustainable within a society.

‘That’s what I call social sustainability. It means that you take care of your people, in terms of teaching and educating, of sharing knowledge and of renewal and improvement. It’s not only energy you can waste, you can also waste people. Herman Wijffels once said that sustainability is reducing devolvement. For example, if an organization has to retrench, the easiest solution is to fire a number of people. By doing so, however, you are passing the problem on to those people and subsequently to society. There is another way. You could also train those people in something that you need. As Wijffels said not long ago, an organization is not a profit machine but part of society.’

Footprint

So how can you measure social sustainability? There are currently methods you can use to measure the so-called ecological ‘footprint’ of, for example, a country – this figure indicates what the impact of your actions is on the earth’s natural resources. ‘But there was no good method for calculating the social footprint of an organization. There have been many reports about social sustainability, for example via the Global Reporting Initiative of the United Nations, but these figures could never be properly compared with each other. They were mainly used by organizations to say look how good I am.’

Transparency

This is why the American researcher Mark McElroy, who will shortly be awarded a PhD for a thesis supervised by Jorna, has developed a method which will be able to calculate the social footprint of an organization (or even a country) in a clear way. ‘The method is not intended to improve the world; its main aim is to make problems with social sustainability transparent.’

Snags

McElroy’s method examines the impact of an organization on the experience and knowledge of its employees, on the infrastructure, on the health care system, etc. ‘It is a very complicated calculation and it certainly has its share of snags. But we’ve taken the first steps. So, if anyone has any ideas about how to improve it, we’re all ears. The most important thing is that we must not stick our heads in the sand, as was the case for ages with ecological sustainability.’

More profit

Thanks to the new method, organizations can compare their social footprint with those of other organizations, or check whether their footprint has improved since last year. ‘I can imagine municipalities saying that you can only build on a certain industrial estate if you improve your social footprint.’ Organizations have already shown great interest in McElroy’s method. ‘They are well aware that if you treat your people right, you get something in return. Responsible organizations do better generally – they have more turnover and make more profit.’

Curriculum vitae

René Jorna (1953) studied analytical philosophy and cognitive psychology at the University of Groningen. He gained his PhD at the same university in 1989 with a thesis on knowledge representations in cognitive science. He has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen since 1987 and became a professor in 1999. His research concerns cognition, sustainable innovation, knowledge technology and decision-supporting systems, particularly those related to planning and scheduling matters. In 1990 he published Knowledge Representation and Symbols in the Mind (Stauffenburg) and in 1994 Semiotic Aspects of Artificial Intelligence (Walter de Gruyter). From 1990 to 1995 he headed a research project on the support of plans and schedules (DISKUS). From 2001 to 2004 he was a programme manager for NIDO (sustainable development). In 2006 he published Planning in Intelligent Systems (Wiley, together with Van Wezel and Meystel) and Sustainable Innovation: The Human, Organizational and Knowledge Dimension (Greenleaf Publishing Cie).

The University of Groningen will be organizing a seminar on how to measure sustainability on 20 November. On the same day, Mark McElroy will be awarded a PhD for his thesis: Social Footprints, Measuring the Social Sustainability Performance of Organizations. His supervisors are R.J.J.M. Jorna and J.M.L. van Engelen. ( More information )

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