Pressures On Hospitality Organizations For Ethical Essay And Environmental Management Practices.

You are required to produce a report which demonstrates a critical understanding of pressures on organisations to pursue ethical operations and environmental management practices, in ONE of the following sectors:

• Construction
• Food and Drinks industry (e.g. breweries)
• Energy
• Health sector
• Hospitality
• Ophthalmic industry

Your report must consider:

• The need for sustainable and ethical business practice (including regulatory/policy and stakeholder pressures).
• Managing emissions to air, land and water
• Environmental Management Systems / ISO 14000

Your report should provide a critical discussion of academic literature as well as applied examples to demonstrate you have fully researched the issues.  To pass the report it is critical to underpin your discussion with reference sources from academically accepted references (sourced through the university library, Google Scholar or a similar acceptable site) however, you may also use evidence of company practices from organisational websites (fully referenced using Harvard conventions).

You should also provide an overall conclusion on the lessons learned and recommendations.

Although you are asked to choose only one industry sector, you are encouraged to research several organisations / workplace contexts (two - three maximum) in order to compare and contrast how organisations within this sector tackle the above topic areas. 

Need for sustainable and ethical business practice

In today’s competitive business world, the involvement of fulfilling needs and providing customer satisfaction is important for the service industry to grow. Hospitality sector is a part of service industry for addressing the issues such as travel arrangements, lodging and amenities. This sector is divided in three sections for clear concepts that are tourism and travel, accommodations, and food and drink. It is essential for every sector to keep up-to-date with major trends for leading in the market. In broad service industry like hospitality, it is important for companies to keep up with the continuous offerings and great services which are targeted towards customer satisfaction which expands their business operations (Manhas & Tukamushaba, 2015). Hospitality sector focuses on ideas of enjoyment, luxury, experiences and pleasure for fulfilling the essentials and necessities of customers. It is important to make sure about the local environment able to sustain the pressure encouraged by the company’s operations for sustainability in hospitality.

Sometimes, the ability of the company to sustain the rising costs is related to the no change in environment-friendly operating procedures. There are various environmental issues caused by interacting with local environment due to amount of pressure. The issues in the hospitality sector are related to the energy usage, pollution, water usage, food waste, and garbage. These issues cost a lot of money and require change to save it (Aragon-Correa, et al., 2015). In the hospitality sector, it is essential to cater issues with a global push for green operations and sustainability placing pressure on companies due to customers. It requires necessity of investing in various environment-friendly operations. In this report, the aim is to discuss the need for sustainable and ethical business practice analysing the regulatory and stakeholder pressures.  

For making profits and beyond, business plays an ever increasing role in CSR (corporate social responsibility) for looking after the company’s key stakeholders such as customers, investors, employees, community and the larger society, as well as environment. The triple bottom-line approach is increased with the requirement of enhancing people, profit and planet. It is essential to execute practices required with a large mark in hospitality sector geared to reduce the negative impacts on the business’s environment related to natural resources like water, energy and food consumption, and employment (Martínez & Nishiyama, 2019). In hotels, it helps with working on fuel efficiency increment in airlines, saving water and energy, and food waste in restaurants minimization. Further, it also holds other social issues rather than only limiting to environmental concerns. Some main hotel companies have executed CSR initiatives linked with progressive employment practices, community development, and workforce diversity encouragement such as Hyatt Hotels, Wyndham Worldwide, Marriott International, and Hilton Worldwide. These companies are listed in “Fortune’s Best Companies to Work for” and the “World’s Most Admired Companies” (Singal & Rhou, 2017).

Emissions to air, land and water management

In this sector, it is important to maintain relations with stakeholders mainly government for balancing between standards required by industry associations and sound relationships; between economic profit and lifestyle within maintaining relationships society, and between organizational engagements and business practices. The sustainability issues directly relates to socio-cultural and environmental sustainability whereas socio-cultural and economic sustainability indirectly (Liu, et al., 2014). There are various environment challenges consisting pollution, global warming and resource depletion and hospitality sector contributes in these environmental problems and its effects on environmental quality. The amount of environmental initiatives and practices were developed for helping to address the environmental impacts consists of international organizations, tourist destinations, hotel companies, trade associations, non-governmental associations and consultants to improve its environmental performance. As the sector’s base product, it is indulges in saving and protecting natural environment as well. In hotels, numerous developments in the regions of CSR, government regulations, green consumerism, sustainable tourism development, and social and ethical investment are done for operating environmental management (Mensah, 2014).

In businesses, it is essential to care about environmental responsibility with various motivations and exciting reasons by hotels for environmental management. There are economic, legal and ethical requirements to assume environmental management in businesses and not stressing influence of stakeholders. The relationship improvement with stakeholders is the valuable external forces significantly driving corporate environmental initiatives. It is to drive these initiatives by stakeholder influence with others from customers, NGOs, and government in the hotel businesses (barbradozier, 2013). The controlled environmental behaviour by hotel facilities is influenced by regulatory and stakeholder pressures. The influence of stakeholders on their observed legitimacy depends on hotels’ environmental management practices. Generally, environmental performance in the accommodation sector employs environmental practices as standards for measuring it such as environmental education, energy and water conservation, and waste management. In hospitality sector, environmental performance is based on environmental management indicators that are conservation, environmental education and communication, waste recycling, eco-labelling and certification, support for local communities, waste management, green marketing and purchasing, environmental auditing, compliance with environmental laws and legislation, and pollution prevention and environmental health (Yadav, et al., 2016).

Stakeholder pressure is based on primary and secondary stakeholders’ degree of influence according to managers’ perception on environmental management activities. In the hospitality sector, sustainability is related to the hotel operations and development consisting social, environmental and economic impact and that is one of the major issues faced in recent times (Martinez-Martinez, et al., 2019). It has an intense environmental impact by water and energy consumption, hazardous and solid waste creation, and durable and consumable goods. Moreover, green operation is more expensive and somewhere people are not interested in sustainability. The improvement with the advances in technology linked to renewable sources of energy used substitute energies at the level of property and CSR programs for new development projects. The evolution in “green thought” is encouraged by various factors that are regulatory affairs, economic incentives, guest experience, cost savings, and corporate brand image (Stottle, 2018).

In hospitality sector, the certain considerable sustainability practices or green practices are water conserving fixtures and linen-reuse programs. There are some customers in hotels with the presence of green operations and even willing to participate in sustainability programs not overriding convenience and price concerns for selection (Bruns-Smith, et al., 2015). Moreover, an increased willingness of them participates while hotels offering incentives such as participating in environmental programs, loyalty program points with weak relation between customer satisfaction improvisation and sustainable programs environmentally as compared to standard drivers. It requires maintaining sustainability programs as increasingly expected consisting facilities, room, food and beverage quality, and hotels in its regular business and not to reduce people satisfaction. It is based on the cost-benefit analysis and other operating considerations while executing programs.

Environment management aims to support local events for becoming greener to measure and reduce GHG (greenhouse gas), transport, and air emissions. The occurrence of fossil-fuel generated power locally and globally translates into appropriate emissions of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides and particulates, with other air pollutants. The actions include appropriate laws and regulations enforcement related to building and planning regulations, safety and health requirements, laws relevant to waste generation, water utilization and releasing emissions, and the levying of environmental taxes (based on usage of energy and water in amount) with voluntary standards as well (Styles, et al., 2015). In hospitality sector, emissions consist of air emissions, ozone depletion, water effluents, and hazardous materials, products, health and safety.

For instance, Hilton International developed a scheme named Hilton Environmental Reporting (HER) operating over 400 hotels worldwide based on the experience of 7years. The company’s resource consumption reports at the Scandic hotel chain for helping with keeping track of using resource and its timely variation measurement system executed and developed named as Scandic Utility System (SUS). This system took efforts to develop for all the Hilton’s facilities which were launched globally later (Bohdanowicz-Godfrey & Zientara, 2015). The key issues related to internal and external air quality includes maintenance of healthy indoor air quality for visitors, broader community, staff and guests. It is essential to ensure no emissions in the atmosphere of liquid, solid or gaseous substances and minimize noise both internally and externally for the well-being and health of people and hotel operations success.

Tourism is a part of hospitality and can cause pollution in this sector through noise, air emissions, littering and solid waste, oils and chemicals, releases of sewage, and visual or architectural pollution. The emissions from energy production and use, and transport emissions are related to photochemical pollution, acid rain and global warming. One of the major contributors in the greenhouse effect is air travel where passenger jets are the growing source quickly of greenhouse gas emissions that requires reduction (Legrand, 2019). The management needs to develop the areas promoting tourism activities with producing CO2 (carbon dioxide) during fossil fuels combustion yet there is no technology currently to mitigate CO2 emissions and policies to regulate it. Hotel operations produce emissions of greenhouse gases released into air particularly CFC (cloro floro carbon) and CO2. Moreover, some emissions are released into the soil and water that harm environmental resources. In the business, air pollution affecting the environment and economies of developing countries due to transport is particularly responsible for rapid increase in vehicle emissions with the use of fuels and old vehicles (Michailidou, et al., 2016).

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed and published ISO 14000 as a series of environmental management standards for companies (Laskurain, et al., 2017). It provides a framework or guideline for them requiring systemization and improvement in their environmental management efforts. An EMS is a systematic approach for handling environmental issues within the company. This ISO 14000 series specifies the requirements of an EMS (environmental management system) for small to large organizations (Farok & Searcy, 2015). With the increase in environmental concerns in the travel industry, the reason of hotels is lacking in providing resources and knowledge for the development of international EMS. Its series of ISO 14000 helps in providing an effective auditing, guideline and evaluation related to the environmental management of hotels.

It is extended between hotel and its people, suppliers and the residents and provides tools for all kinds of organizations for the management of their environmental responsibilities to overcome the challenges such as climate change (Bagur-Femenias, et al., 2016). These family standards of ISO 14000 are developed by ISO Technical Committee. It helps in enhancing company’s environmental performance mainly hotels with the requirements of using an EMS. The outcomes of EMS include achievement of environmental objectives and fulfilment of compliance obligations as well. For instance, Bucuti Beach Resort and Tara Beach Resort in the Caribbean are certified under ISO 14001 for enhancing eco-activism and to remain a leader in sustainable tourism, and also being the most sustainable hotel and resort across the globe (Curley, 2019).

Conclusion and Recommendations

To conclude, hospitality sector is an enormous one consists of accommodation, travel, and food industry. In this sector, it is essential to maintain the sustainability and eco-friendly environment for minimizing industry pressures by implementing ethical and sustainable business practice. Moreover, it was analysed the regulatory and stakeholder pressures knowing the need for sustainable and ethical business practice and managing the emissions of air, land and water. And, the use of EMS for improvement in the environment management efforts with the help of series ISO 14000 to provide knowledge and resources in the companies such as hotels, travel industry, etc. It is to recommend that in the hospitality sector, the companies should “go green” for achieving cost savings, customer loyalty and positive environmental impact. It is essential to minimize the source of resource consumption and waste for hotel’s green initiatives. The recycling embracement, starting to compost, installing energy saving technologies, planting a garden, encouraging guests to go green, executing alternative energy sources, supporting sustainable and local businesses, practicing to address, and taking care of linens can generate the possibility.

References

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