2.2
SDM Workshops This phase involved interviews with subject-matter experts internal and external to Ford. They included company employees and dealers, subject-matter experts from academia, research institutes, investor organizations and nonprofits, and members of the community within which the company operates. We interviewed 166 participants in total from June 2019 to February 2020. These interviews were conducted in a focus group format. All participants were asked to identify the fundamental ways Ford may impact social sustainability, currently or in the foreseeable future. This long-term value creation perspective was necessary because the automotive industry is undergoing a rapid period of disruption, due to the rise of automation and shared mobility, so a longer-term perspective is needed to ensure the social metrics’ relevance in the future. According to SDM principles, all decision priorities—in this case, the company’s social impacts—are hierarchal in nature. A small number of core social impacts (or ends) are achieved by a much larger number of lower-
order means. For example, a company may improve the health of its community (a core impact, or an end) by minimizing its facility emissions and preventing any industrial accidents (two separate means). To isolate the end from the means, participants were asked to describe why they believe each of the impacts they identified was important, from their perspective. We analyzed the interview data qualitatively, looking for common emerging themes related to how Ford affects social sustainability and drives human progress more broadly. We then used these themes to develop a hierarchal model of how Ford impacts social sustainability. In keeping with the SDM approach, we phrased these themes as actionable social sustainability objectives, making them easier to integrate into company decision-making in the future. We phrased Ford’s social impacts as verbs with a specific direction, such as “decrease the cost of transportation” instead of “transportation affordability,” which lacks a specific direction.
2.2.1 Ford Employees and Dealerships We spoke with representatives from 31 different departments within Ford (in the U.S. and internationally), as well as from its financial services arm (Ford Credit) and its philanthropic arm (Ford Fund), for a total of 55 interviewees. These departments were identified based on whether their work may impact social sustainability, and they included the company’s sustainability, marketing, human resources, automotive safety and corporate strategy departments, among others. Participants were asked to consider their department’s role within the company and to identify the fundamental ways their department may impact social sustainability, currently or in the foreseeable future, and why this impact was important. In addition to Ford employees, Ford (and Lincoln) dealers offered a unique perspective on social impacts. In their dual role as Ford’s customers and vendors, dealers are simultaneously enablers and beneficiaries of the company’s social impacts. To capture this unique perspective, we spoke to the general managers at six
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | ERB INSTITUTE
Ford dealerships (each located in a different U.S. state). As with the employee interviews, the participants were asked about the most important ways their dealership (and Ford more broadly) impacted social sustainability. The social impact themes from these interviews were analyzed using content analysis and were used to build a preliminary model of how Ford impacts social sustainability. This analysis involved multiple rounds of iteration between the interview data and the literature on sustainability and mobility to identify the company’s core social impacts (the ends), as well as the individual ways these impacts are achieved (the means). We analyzed the interview data to first identify the wide range of means by which Ford creates social impact, which we then distilled down to a smaller set of ends. This preliminary model represented the internal company perspective on social impacts. The areas covered under the model were designed to be individually mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
