750 words please

Case Study 2: Jib Ellison (Environmentalist) and Lee Scott (Former CEO, WalMart): Sustainability Saves Money and the Environment This case study explores the collaboration between Jib Ellison, an environmentalist, and Lee Scott, a former CEO of Wal-Mart, to develop successful environmentally-friendly business practices. Readers are asked to assess the effectiveness of Jib Ellison as a leader, outside of Wal-Mart's organizational boundaries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes's book on Wal-Mart is called Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution (2011). As the title suggests, many environmentalists thought it would be unlikely that Wal-Mart would support the green revolution. At one time, environmentalists would be more likely to protest Wal-Mart with picket signs rather than praise Wal-Mart. But environmental advocate Jib Ellison took another route. He invited Wal-Mart executives and environmental activists to take a white-water rafting trip. They would have to paddle together or sink. The trip also let the Wal-Mart executives see what the environmentalists were trying to savethe beauty and majesty of nature. The team-building experience worked and the two groups began engaging in earnest conversations about how Wal-Mart could go green. Lee Scott worked with Jib Ellison to find a quick and easy ecological and cost saving project that would demonstrate that going green is good for both customers and Wal-Mart. They started with a toy: a car and truck set for toddlers. The truck set came in display boxes that were several inches larger than necessary. A simple change, shrinking the box size, produced big dividends. Smaller boxes meant more boxes per shipping container, more boxes per foot of store shelf (a huge factor in retail), and less cardboard packaging that had to be paid for. The results: Wal-Mart saved US$2.4 million per year, 4,000 fewer trees were used for cardboard, and roughly a million gallons of fuel oil was saved. Going green was a win all the way around. And this was just for a single productthe potential savings across the hundreds of thousands of items Wal-Mart sold were huge. Soon, Wal-Mart was requiring its suppliers to reduce waste in packaging for a large number of products. Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer by a large margin. When Wal-Mart speaks, other companies listen. Wal-Mart's sustainability requirements hit the world's manufacturers like a force of naturean irresistible wave promoting efficiency in packaging and shipping. Scott allocated a half-billion dollar annual budget to researching ways Wal-Mart could become more sustainablean unparalleled budget for going green. Scott also devoted a considerable amount of his own time to the green initiatives. Sustainability became a part of every employee's missionit was not something relegated to an obscure and unimportant department. Because of Wal-Mart's size, even small changes could produce big savings. Vending machines are often lit up like Las Vegasafter all, the vending machine companies do not pay for the electricity they use. Just turning off the lights in the vending machines in employee break rooms saved Wal-Mart US$1.5 million in electricity costs. Wal-Mart also discovered that many store counter display lights stayed on regardless of whether customers were nearbyinstalling motion detectors that activated the lights saved WalMart money. More accomplishments listed in the text included Wal-Mart having an overall 16% decrease in carbon emissions per US$1 million in sales (compared to 2008); increasing the efficiency of its trucks by 60% in terms of miles per case delivered it delivered 77 million more cases, yet drove 100 million fewer miles compared to 2005; and increasing its recycling rate to 64% of its garbage.

Questions 1. Why do you think Jib was successful in motivating Wal-Mart to become more sustainable when many other environmental activists were unsuccessful?

2. Which works better: protests or cooperation?

3. Manufacturers saved money by using smaller packages for their products. How important do you think Lee Scott and Wal-Mart's leadership was in motivating the manufacturers to save money while supporting the environment?

4. Jib started exerting leadership over Wal-Mart while he was still an outsider, and Lee Scott exerted leadership over many companies besides Wal-Mart. How often does leadership take place outside of organizational boundaries?

Reference

Humes, E. (2011). Force of nature: The unlikely story of Wal-Mart's green revolution. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Adapted from Sage Business Cases. 2020 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved