Gojo Industries: Aiming for Global Sustainability Leadership

Description

GOJO Industries, a U.S.-based hand hygiene company, plans to use sustainability as a business strategy in its big hairy audacious goal of reaching one billion people every day by 2020. It has developed a six level framework to embed sustainability throughout every aspect of the company internally and to assess its successes in the following areas: mitigating risk; reducing energy, waste and materials; differentiation; entering new markets; protecting and enhancing brand; and influencing industry standards. The company has a long history of using sustainability to drive innovation and facilitate expansion into new markets and sees sustainability as a key differentiator from its competitors to achieve its goal. In order to so, the company must also consider the importance of employee engagement in order to further embed sustainability and increase the number of people it reaches with its products.

Learning Objective

This case is suitable for an introductory sustainability in business, strategy or marketing course at to help students to understand: ·How a commitment to sustainability has inspired product innovation and expansion to new markets, making sustainability a valuable source of competitive advantage. ·The six strategic areas on which a company can focus to embed sustainability. ·The importance of making business and sustainable value creation a single effort rather than separate objectives and the difference between philanthropy and using core business operations to drive sustainability. ·The business advantages of engaging employees at all levels of an organization.

Keywords

Competitive advantage flourishing Growth strategy social sustainability United States