Sustainability
Sustainable Business
Sustainable business is socially and environmentally aware of business approaches and operating strategies, which both guide the organization to a clean and healthier business world, offering an avenue for profitability improvement. Additionally, a sustainable business, also referred to as a green business, is an enterprise that has minimal negative effects on the local or global environment, society, or economy, but it is a business that strives to meet a triple bottom line (Bansal & DesJardine, 2014). Sustainable business clusters under diverse groups and sometimes are referred to as green capitalism. A business is defined as green if it effectively matches criteria of incorporating the principles of sustainability in each of its business decision, supplies environmentally friendly services and products, its greener than the traditional competition and has effectively made an enduring commitment to the environmental principle in business operations. No business exists and operates in a vacuum (Bansal & DesJardine, 2014). For a business to be sustainable, it has to endure challenges within its workforce and solve them. Additionally, it has to look for various opportunities and exploit them for progress. As a result, the following paragraphs highlight the current challenges and opportunities within today’s workforce as they relate to business sustainability.
Discuss the current challenges and opportunities in today’s workforce as it relates to the chosen topic
Organization managers and political leaders must be aware that the global economy is now much bigger than its natural base. Managers should effectively be devoted towards ensuring sustainable growth of their business, which is represented by the formation and establishment of innovative environments that are important for the challenge for countries and regions. All business has been aiming towards the development of sustainable business development across the globe (Bansal & DesJardine, 2014). However, the match towards a sustainable business has faced different challenges that have slowed its development within the workforce. Understanding different challenges are significant for organizations for they will develop and grow in the right direction. Notable challenges towards sustainable business development include;
- Climate change and public policy: Climatic change and public policy have been the most important challenge of future and present generations. Climate change, in particular, has affected almost every aspect of the community, economy, and environment. Organizations need to play a greater responsibility through decarbonizing the economy and effectively building resilience towards climate effects.
- Collaborating for sustainability: In business, most sustainability issues need a systematic change, and the systematic changes need collaboration between the major stakeholders. Organization managers need to speak one accord with stakeholders and competitors to deal with sustainability challenges. Tackling these challenges will ensure a safe move and development towards business sustainability.
- Reporting and Measuring Sustainability: With the proliferation of sustainability reporting and ranking of standards, and businesses need to understand how to streamline the reporting in order to reduce the redundancy, produce a positive impact, and resolve inconsistencies.
- Educating Consumers: Sales for sustainable, socially responsible goods and services are not a good reflection of the invested efforts within their development. For a business to grow towards sustainability, they have to understand better how to classify, measure and market their sustainable goods and services in a manner that avoids the aspect of greenwashing instead of positively influencing consumer behavior.
For complete development and move to sustainable business, organizations need to look for better ways to deal with challenges. Dealing with any challenge ensures that the business grows smoothly and is not impacted negatively. Solving the challenges opens the room for the business to grow towards sustainability (Pojasek, 2007). One of the main opportunities for organizations towards the development of sustainable business is through ensuring that the organization’s workforce is sustainable. A sustainable workforce within an organization is where the working environment supports and effectively cares for the wellbeing of employees (Slawinski & Bansal, 2015). In an organization that uses human resources in a sustainable way, workers are not able to do their roles or demands, but also they become innovative, creative, and flourish. It is an opportunity which many organizations should aim at applying and implementing within its working force a factor which would mean growth in sustainable business.
Currently, many business need to have their own organizations and become entrepreneurs. What many organizations lack is the method to make different business ideas, they have to become sustainable both environmentally and economically. Making business organizations grow towards sustainability can effectively be achieved through grasping new ideas like opportunities and implement them. Financial Organizations can effectively address the different environmental issues faced by the portfolio organizations by giving different financial products like equity investments and credit lines conditional with the organization meeting the eligibility criteria (Bansal & DesJardine, 2014). The initial step towards a meeting of the portfolio is through understanding the different types of environmental opportunities across the Financial Opportunities and which can structure the financial offerings. Opportunities towards business sustainability typically call for lender and investee organizations to include important technologies in their operations, which might lead to operating efficiencies and cost savings (Rezaee, 2016). The new technologies might call for the purchase of new materials within the organization or might simply need the replacement of inefficient materials within the organization. Noticing and implementing new opportunities in business forms the larger part of the international movements towards business sustainability.
In spite of the increased debate towards the definition of sustainability, the concept has in the recent years gained adequate acceptance between the CEOs and organization managers to initiate a cause in them to effectively focus on new opportunities to apply and improve on the current returns for future growth through pursuing sustainability (Rezaee, 2016). Organizations that succeed through sustainable business are not altruistic, and they do not choose between environmental responsibility and profitability. However, they achieve the dramatic gains through efficiency, strategic advantage, and product differentiation from the innovations they make after getting new opportunities and implementing them within the organization hence making a new perspective. Business with the need to grow towards sustainability has to apply an implement a number of measures. There are effective ways which organizations should apply, and they include building a business on a belief of growing in the rights direction, embracing change within an organization and standing still towards operations, focusing on the creation of value proposition, focusing on excelling in a specific area and focusing on constant reinvention. There is no secret that organizations need to deal with evolving challenges and look for new opportunities to make their business to move towards sustainability.
References
Bansal, P., & DesJardine, M. R. (2014). Business sustainability: It is about time. Strategic Organization, 12(1), 70-78.
Gao, J., & Bansal, P. (2013). Instrumental and integrative logics in business sustainability. Journal of Business Ethics, 112(2), 241-255.
Pojasek, R. B. (2007). A framework for business sustainability. Environmental Quality Management, 17(2), 81.
Rezaee, Z. (2016). Business sustainability research: A theoretical and integrated perspective. Journal of Accounting Literature, 36, 48-64.
Slawinski, N., & Bansal, P. (2015). Short on time: Intertemporal tensions in business sustainability. Organization Science, 26(2), 531-549.