“Every business decision has consequences, also social and environmental ones; business is not being done in a void.” – why GrupoNueva has a role-model function for the 21st century corporation.

Maria Emilia Correa, Vice-President Social and Environmental Responsibility, GrupoNueva, Santiago, Chile

How many companies do you know that push in the media that they are extremely social and environmentally responsible? There are quite a number of them today. But how many of those do you know that really spend larger amounts of money to have a positive impact that is legally not demanded and affects their core business? GrupoNueva is one of the very few that take responsibility one step further. Among others they spend 6 million USD to REDUCE formaldehyde EMISSIONS in their wood boards, which no competitor IN LATIN AMERICA is doing, they take social and environmental consequences of their business decisions very serious even so this makes things more complicated and often slows down processes and is more expensive in the short-term. Even so you could argue that GrupoNueva is kind of forced by its majority stakeholder, the VIVA Trust, a trust that was set-up by Stephan Schmidheiny to INSURE THAT his businesses IN LATIN AMERICA WILL BE MANAGED in a socially and environmentally responsible way (part of its profits is used to finance Avina, a network of social entrepreneurs in Latin America) to take social and environmental responsibility really serious, there is still a huge flexibility in the degree of seriousness that can be applied. As Maria Emilia told us, however, these short-term increases in costs and time, very often pay in the long-term due to a better image, due to talented people who want to work for GrupoNueva, employees that enjoy their work daily because they see meaning in the way they are conducting business and due to the fact that this way of thinking pushes new creative and innovative ways of doing business.

Enjoy Maria Emilia’s selected thoughts and statements of our discussion below. You may be able to read more about her diverse projects in our book “MyImpact”.

Maria Emilia Correa’s selected quotations:
"When I read Stephan Schmidheiny's book “Changing Course” in 1992 the idea that business can be a driving force creating positive change was very new, in a way mind blowing. It was so different from the 70ies environmental activist attitude."

"I strongly believe in conservation and this is still a very important issue to me. The role of civil society, all the activists and protectionists, is to bring topics on the agenda, to point at what is going wrong. But in that role you can actually change very little. In business you are in a position to change things, although it's not easy."

"Talking to business as a conservationist is a process of becoming bilingual. Also, you need to add a strong component of trust and respect. And then it's like in any negotiation that looks for win-win solutions; you take a bit, you give a bit."

"My motivation comes from two things; first is my basic love and appreciation for nature. I just enjoy it. The second one is the idea of a social construct, of environment as a base for human life and also as a playing field for many social issues."

"Stephan Schmindheiny is a source of new ideas and visions; he always leaves me with an 'aha', with a new way of looking at things. Julio Moura, the CEO of GrupoNueva, has the incredible ability of taking conceptual ideas down to earth and finding necessary steps to implement them. He keeps me and the company on track."

"When I first started working for GrupoNueva I had no idea about business, its rules and issues. Today I understand them and I also understand the immense potential that business has to create change and make things happen."

"When you try to implement concepts in business you have to be very specific, you need to come up with very clear steps."

"People in business are educated in a very strange way; for some reason they believe that business is happening in a void, that business decisions don't impact anything in the social and environmental area. My job is to bring the reality of life to business decisions, to make managers feel what the consequences of their work are - especially the social and environmental ones."

"Considering the social and environmental consequences of your decisions may be a bit more complicated at the beginning. But in the long term it just makes sense. Some managers find this way of thinking intuitively appealing. Others do not."

"Unfortunately crises and big issues are the best source of change; whether they happen to us or to competitors. When one of our competitors struggled for more than a year with public and legal outrage following a pollution case, our people wanted to make sure they never get in that situation."

"One of the examples of our activities is the fact that we voluntarily adhere to highest European standards for formaldehyde contained in our wood boards. This measure, not required by OUR markets, costs us 6 million USD per year that we have to make up somewhere else. We just believe that's the right decision for our customers and employers and we also try to use it in marketing."

"I enjoy the fact that people working for us are proud of their employer and that many more want to join us because of our values. Here they can bring their consciousness to work."

"The additional restrictions that we make in business considering our social and environmental impact are an incredible source of innovation."

"The work here is full of stress, timing, pressure and adrenaline. Sometimes I just want to go hiking and leave it all. But then I remember that that's the place where you see things happening and that's the most important thing."

"Creating positive impact makes for a happy wake up every day."

"When I started working with Amanco, our water system company, their accident rate was at 11% versus the 2.5% industry average. Today we are at 1.3%! These are the kind of achievements that give me satisfaction."

"It's easiest to criticize and to say what's wrong about companies from the outside. Now I am actually here to change it and it's hard. It really is not easy. But that's how things improve - step by step and with a lot of hard work."

"You cannot think about business decisions without considering how they change society. Business builds society and companies are a social act."

"Every decision that a manager takes makes a difference, potentially a negative one. I am not saying that we should not make decisions, we should just take 5 more minutes to consider their impact and think of ways to make it less negative or even positive."

"We have a guideline that says that 10% of our sales need to be into projects with which we actively improve the situation of our financially poor customers. These projects, however, have to bring the same profit as the regular ones. This guideline fosters a lot of creative solutions."

"We are actively looking for opportunities to improve people's lives through our business. We have developed specific products like a drop irrigation system for poor families. We facilitated their access to loans and through our product much less water is being wasted. Obviously, as a company we are here to make a profit. But what else can we do? Where else can we contribute?"

"Profit is good if you are doing good things."

"As a business we have a responsibility to our shareholders. It is not our money; we can't just donate it. Our investment in environmental and social responsibility is in one way risk management and in another way it is also a bet concerning the market development. We believe that that's where the consumer preference is going and we want to be ready ahead of the competition."

"One of the challenging questions for me is how to make sure that the change we create in the company is solid. How do we institutionalize it in a way that the values will be independent of the current management? How much of our work holds without the pressure from the CEO and me?"

"We will not be able to solve today's issues with the same frame of mind with which we created them. That's why I believe that working with young people and expanding their perspective is very crucial."

"Today the pace of negative development in the world is extremely fast. The positive change is not fast and broad enough to compensate."

"I am really looking forward to the times when you get a huge profit from doing the right thing."

"I was very lucky to have a mentor; this does not happen to everyone. But in any case you need to be courageous about doing the thing that is important to you."

Some background on Maria Emilia Correa:
Maria Emilia grew up in Colombia and she graduated in Law from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. A master's degree in sociology and social history followed from the New School for Social Research, New York, and in 1984 she started working in the conservation of biological resources in Latin America with organizations such as The Nature Conservancy of the United States and Fundación Natura in Colombia. After the Rio Summit in 1992, Maria Emilia was asked to work in the area of sustainability in Latin America for the COLOMBIAN Business Council for Sustainable Development and to be its executive director, which she did until June 2000. Since 2000 she has been working for GrupoNueva in the role of Vice-president for Social and Environmental Responsibility.
Prior to her links with GrupoNueva Maria Emilia was a board member of international organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative and Sullivan Principles for Corporate Social Responsibility, as well as serving on the editorial committees of various academic publications on sustainable development. She was also actively involved in defining the positions of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) on corporate social responsibility and eco-efficiency, and collaborated with multilateral agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF).

Some background on GrupoNueva:
GrupoNueva is a strategic holding company with operations in 15 countries in the Americas in forestry and the construction material business. Its divisions are Amanco and Masisa, its corporate headquarter is in Santiago, Chile. Masisa produces and markets wood products internationally; Amanco is a leader in Latin America in the production and marketing of water management solutions and light construction systems. The group operates under the promise “successful companies for a better world” and the idea is to demonstrate a way in which the business world can contribute to opening channels that provide positive feedback to civil society. The organization operates under the umbrella of the VIVA Trust who owns the majority of GrupoNueva stock. VIVA provides strategic guidance and must ensure that administration of the group's affairs is consistent with the vision and values of GrupoNueva's former shareholder, Stephan Schmidheiny. The dividends GrupoNueva pays to VIVA are reinvested in the improvement of Latin American society, notably through the Avina Foundation.

If you would like to engage with the work of Maria Emilia Correa or get to know more about Grupo Nueva visit http://www.gruponueva.com, or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.