Teaching Module on the Future of Fashion

Authors: Johnson, Jennifer; Wu, Gina
Source: The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education
Year: 2010

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Abstract:

Companies across all industries are facing the challenges of business sustainability, debating how best to address these risky issues while also embracing their opportunities for competitive advantage. This Teaching Module uses the context of the fashion industry to discuss topics that are shaping the future of all industries. These topics include sustainable resource management, the challenges and opportunities of global growth, workforce management, and the role of ethical consumption in business.

The fashion industry offers a compelling case study for exploring business sustainability issues. In the fashion industry, as in many industries, success requires highly developed sourcing, design, manufacturing, and marketing chains. Increasingly, success also means incorporating sustainability in resource and labor management, as firms realize that long-term corporate survival will depend on new ways of doing business. Climate change, resource challenges, new technologies and dramatic shifts in the global economy are already impacting the industry. The nexus of these concerns allows students to explore sustainability challenges while providing a framework for discussing new business models and management techniques for the future. Given its enormous reach and connection to important business topics ranging from climate change to social networking, the fashion industry's practices provide broadly-relevant lessons for future business leaders in all fields as they focus on ways to minimize negative impacts and maximize positive sustainable outcomes for businesses, stakeholders, and society.

Introduction
Learning Objective: To discuss solutions to the risk-laden challenges of business sustainability while also embracing their opportunities for competitive advantage. The Module highlights a variety of sustainable pathways for business development and enables discussion of the best approaches to resource management, globalization, labor, and ethical consumption for future success. It also provides a platform to consider how sustainability is related to economic growth, and how a range of industries, including fashion, will need to change in the coming decades.

     Fashion is a big deal. The global apparel, accessories and luxury goods market generated total revenues of      $1,334.1 billion in 2008. And the opportunity for the industry to have a positive impact on global society and
     the environment is just as significant as its economic clout.
     -Fashion Futures 2025[1]

The world of fashion is often depicted as a glamorous exception to everyday life, but the catwalks and high-profile designers are just the tip of a very complex, evolving iceberg rooted in the issues that many corporations face daily. The market for fashion is a multi-billion dollar global industry with the power to influence our lives and our environment, for better or for worse. It brings goods into our homes, shapes our consumer preferences, and extends across the globe through its labor, supply and marketing chains. As companies across industries are facing the challenges of business sustainability; the current debate is how best to address these risky issues while also developing the opportunities for competitive advantage that they represent. Given its enormous reach and connection to everything from climate change to social networking, the fashion industry's practices provide broadly-relevant lessons for future business leaders in all fields as they focus on ways to minimize negative impacts and maximize positive sustainable outcomes for their businesses, stakeholders, and society.

In the fashion industry, success requires highly developed sourcing, design, manufacturing, and marketing operations. Increasingly, success also means incorporating sustainability into resource and labor management, as firms realize that long-term corporate survival will depend on new ways of doing business. Climate change, resource challenges, new technologies and dramatic shifts in the global economy are already impacting the industry. The nexus of these concerns makes the fashion industry a valuable case study for these challenges and provides a framework for discussing new business models and management techniques for the future. Product life cycles in fashion are among the shortest in any industry, and the rapid cycle of change and adaptation makes it a useful proving ground for innovation at many levels.

This Teaching Module uses the fashion industry as a case study to focus on topics crucial to the success of businesses in a range of industries. Designed to help prepare students to lead in an uncertain future, this Module discusses topics that will shape outcomes across industries, including sustainable resource management, the challenges and opportunities of global growth, workforce management, and the role of ethical consumption in business. In preparing for a future in which a growing world population, declining resources, and unsustainable practices are likely to play significant roles in industry operations, will business as usual be sufficient or will methods need to change in the coming decades? How should the fashion industry, and others, prepare for the long term?

As part of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program mission to develop leaders for a sustainable future, CasePlace Teaching Modules provide faculty with a selection of cases, articles, background reading and other material related to a given theme. The goal of this Module is to help future business leaders prepare for the challenges of shaping a sustainable future through the lens of the fashion industry. Fashion Futures 2025: Global Scenarios for a Sustainable Fashion Industry, produced by Forum for the Future and Levi Strauss, served as the initial inspiration for this Module and is included here with other readings designed to provide teachers with substantive material for classroom use. Each of the following topic sections includes introductory text laying out the relevance of the issue, as well as a selection of case and other reading material intended to form the basis of classroom discussion, with a list of supplemental material for more in-depth reading. Two final sections include Teaching Questions to guide discussion and a selection of additional background material for those who wish to go deeper.

Teaching Topics
1. Resource Management: Sustainable Futures
2. A Global Future: Challenges and Opportunities
3. The Future of Labor Management
4. A Future of Ethical Consumption?