The Role of the Consulting Industry in Catalyzing Sustainability in Business

Students

Thomas Comer & Patrick Kaminski

College(s)

Mendoza College of Business

Faculty Advisor

Chad Harms

Class Year

2021

Thomas Comer, Patrick Kaminski

From the outset of this project, our goal was to understand how sustainability efforts and initiatives were being integrated across the consulting industry. Given the increasing focus on sustainability in the overall business community and the influence of consulting firms, we wanted to see just how these companies were positioning themselves to provide the sustainability solutions needed to drive impactful change.

To do this, we first took a deep dive into the rise of environmental sustainability in the business world, as discussed in our literature review. This involved heavy research to provide the information that demonstrates just how important this topic has become. Not only are businesses seeing its significance with regards to their bottom lines, but they have also recognized the value current and potential employees have placed on it.

We knew that our second section, an extensive look into several consulting firms’ publicly available information on their sustainability offerings, would be crucial to the project but that it would also need to be supplemented by first-hand accounts of actual professionals working at these companies. Thus, our primary research component involved utilizing our networks as well as connections made online to provide a closer look into as many firms as possible. We set out to interview consultants, virtually over Zoom, about their knowledge and perceptions of their given company’s efforts to integrate environmental sustainability into their client relationships and work offerings.

This was a process that, despite several circumstances preventing us from accomplishing our complete goal, revealed many insights and illuminating information about each firm that could not be found elsewhere online. We are very proud of the work we have done and hope to shine a light on the overall topic of our capstone: how the consulting industry is catalyzing the incorporation of sustainability in the business world.