“How to get the boardroom to make radical changes in its approach to social issues and the environment is the really big question”, says Professor Gail Whiteman, the Rubin Chair of Lancaster’s new Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business.
Straddling Lancaster Environment Centre and Lancaster University Management School, the centre, which is being supported by The Rubin Foundation Charitable Trust for five years, will look at environmental sustainability, ethical supply chains, and how business can be a force for good.
The Centre is named after the Pentland Group, the company behind some of the world’s leading sports, outdoor and fashion brands, including household names such as Speedo, Canterbury, Berghaus, Ellesse and Boxfresh. Professor Whiteman, who is originally from Toronto, Canada, comes to Lancaster following a distinguished career in the private sector and academia. She sees it as the role of the Pentland Centre to act as a link between science and business, to help business leaders to understand what science is telling us about climate change and social issues and getting this message across in terms they understand.
“The Pentland Centre is trying to help businesses understand the environmental and ethical impacts of their supply chains – Pentland was an early mover on this,” she says.
“My over-riding mission has to be to link the best minds in science, the best minds in business and local people to help deliver positive change. It is about boiling down the messages to make the science more understandable for leaders in business.
“The messages need to tie in with their economic motivations as well. We are living in a market-based world. It has to be about offering solutions, not just criticisms.
“Our role is to support those businesses that are already convinced that climate change is an issue. We can provide the most progressive companies with the knowledge and solutions to support what they are doing.”
Professor Whiteman says she is looking forward to working with colleagues across multiple faculties at Lancaster in order to scale up business solutions for sustainability. Appointments to the centre include Lancaster’s Dr Jessica Davies. Dr Dmitry Yumashev and Jimena Alvarez transfer to the team with Professor Whiteman, continuing work on an EU-funded research project with British Antarctic Survey: assessing global economic risks from a changing Arctic.
Stephen Rubin, Chairman of Pentland Group, is hopeful that the new centre will play an important role in promoting sustainability.
“Having worked in the area of sustainability for a very long time, it seems to me that there is still so much short-termism in corporate life," he says.
“We have to realise that in the world we are living in, we cannot endlessly waste resources. We need to lay the foundation stones for those generations that follow.
“It is my hope that the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business can utilise academic and practical insights to scale up business solutions for sustainability, and to enable business leaders to make more courageous decisions.”
Stephen Rubin will serve on the centre’s Executive Advisory Group.
Lancaster University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mark Smith, believes it is vital that students learn about sustainability.
“Education for sustainable development is a priority objective for Lancaster, it’s very important. When creating new thinking and creating tomorrow’s citizens you must look at the issues that they will encounter.
“Issues around sustainability will be top of the political debate and should be considered as we prepare our students for life beyond the University. It’s got to be embedded: if our students don’t have the skills or knowledge in this area they will be less equipped for their futures.”