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Civic dialogue can build broad-based agreement and commitment around complex and controversial issues. New materials from the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS, nbs.net/) show how businesses can use civic dialogue to engage citizens and advance sustainability issues.

Why civic dialogues? Last year, NBS's Leadership Council of leading Canadian businesses asked: How can businesses help citizens become informed, inspired and engaged in a national dialogue about sustainability? These businesses felt that they were reaching a glass ceiling for sustainability practice: that they often want to do more than most customers or shareholders are asking of them. For these business leaders to advance sustainability, society must also change.

Civic dialogues are an effective form of public conversation, capable of achieving fundamental change. Civic dialogues have been used to set priorities for national-level agendas on issues such as energy (e.g. the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plans), and to address issues at regional and local levels (e.g. Canada's Alberta Climate Dialogue).

Business historically has played little role in civic dialogues, and its involvement can advance sustainability goals. NBS materials identify:

·         Definitions of civic dialogue: Key concepts and alternative models

·         Civic dialogue as a complementary strategy: How civic dialogue relates to other forms of public outreach by business, such as stakeholder engagement and multi-sector partnerships

·         The business value of involvement: Civic dialogue's role in allowing businesses to understand customers, build brand and market and change the rules of the game

This project represents an innovative collaboration between research and practice. Researcher Dr. Thomas Webler summarized the best academic and practical research available on civic engagement. A working session of leaders from the business, non-profit and academic communities provided extensive feedback, which Dr. Webler incorporated into the final documents.

While the resulting documents are geared to managers, we hope they will also support researchers working in this area.

The two reports are:

·         Civic Dialogues on Sustainability: A Business Briefing: http://nbs.net/knowledge/civic-dialogue/executive-report/ (17 pages)

·         How to Engage in Civic Dialogue: A Best Practices Guide for Business: http://nbs.net/knowledge/civic-dialogue/systematic-review/ (45 pages)

Please share your thoughts. Is this work useful? What might you add? Comment on the report webpage or by sending us a note (mfischhoff@nbs.net).

Other NBS resources

NBS systematic reviews synthesize research on the topics most important to senior sustainability officers within leading companies. These are excellent starting places if you are initiating research projects in an area or looking for readings for your classes. Full reviews are available at http://nbs.net/publications/systematic-reviews/; executive reports are available at http://nbs.net/publications/executive-reports/.

NBS presents insights from thought leaders in the sustainability space, including John Sterman, Gail Whiteman and Peter Senge, at http://nbs.net/category/thought-leaders/. We also post links to recently published journal articles in corporate social responsibility and sustainability (http://nbs.net/research/).

Please subscribe to NBS (http://nbs.net/community/subscribe/) to receive our newsletter and help bridge research and practice in sustainability.

Maya Fischhoff

Knowledge Manager | Network for Business Sustainability 

412-965-1756

http://www.nbs.net 

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