Making Sustainability Tangible: Land O'Lakes and the Dairy Supply Chain

This case study examines the challenges of implementing a vaguely defined concept called sustainability in a large organization that also has a cooperative structure. Stakeholder theory is described and applied to a multinational dairy firm. The case firm, Land O'Lakes, must balance the needs of multiple constituencies: the general public, employees, cooperative members, external funding organizations, and the management team. One challenge is to define sustainability for the entire dairy industry. The case discusses the strategies used by firms in developing a sustainability response where the tradeoffs between different strategies are between credibility and autonomy and using an industry rather than a firm-level response.