Business Sustainability: Importance And Strategies Essay.

Importance of Business Sustainability

Business organisations need to put in place measures that in a broader sense cover the economic demands of the organisation and in consideration of the business environment. There needs to be a coordination between these factors for the success of the business. The success of these entities puts the business in responsible and ethically successful position (Smith, 2016). The main purpose of business sustainability is to see that the business succeeds its return of investments. The initial investments should be able to tell if the position of the business is in profitable trajectory. The corporate culture dictate the positioning of the business in terms of its values and beliefs. The manner in which any particular business entity does business informs how the business succeeds and the attitudes that affect such an endeavour. A sustainable business should be in a position to do business without negatively affecting the other factors that relate with the business whether negatively or positively. The community within the business operates should be able to benefit from the business in hand. A sustainable business should sustainably affect the business environment and the society that relates with the business positively (Hamann, 2012). The aim of the business sustainability strategy should be to make a positive to the areas that affect the business. Any organisation that does business a particular environment should act positively to ensure that the business operations does not lead to issues of environmental degradation and unfair treatment of the other layers within the environment.

A sustainable business should be consider how friendly they are terms of competition and social responsibility (Li, Phan and Sun, 2021). Operation of the business should be more than just making profits but should also be in consideration of how the business operates in their quest to make profits. The current day world of business requires a purpose driven approach in doing business that is for the greater good of the business and the factor that affect the operation of the business. A purpose driven organisation ensures that the operators of the business are satisfied with the role they pay in the business and the benefits they accumulate from the business (Levin-Rozalis, 2015). The employees of the organisation should be in a position to pride with the identity of the business through the benefits they gain. Recent studies indicate the success of any business entity is not necessarily favoured by innovation but by the relationship of the business with the environment. A purpose driven business organisation informs the success of the business. A purposeful business is one that operates within the provisions of a particular business model. The business model informs how the organisation does business and this is what informs the organisations decision making process. The purpose of the organisation serves the needs of the stakeholders both in the internal and the external environment (Levin-Rozalis, 2015). The management of a purpose driven organisation should commit to achieve the goals of the organisation. The leaders should put the employees of the organisation on their toes to ensure the commit to their roles in ensuring the goals of the organisation are met.

Strategies for a Sustainable Business Model

Any sustainable business should be in a position to give the position of the business in terms of the impact the business has both socially and economically. The reporting should consider the day today activities that the business engages in. This sought of reporting show the organisation’s commitment to a sustainable worldwide economic environment. This kind of reporting helps the stakeholders of the business and the immediate environment of the goals of the business and the role they will play in the world of business. Sustainable business reporting is an important consideration in the business in terms of integrated reporting. This kind of reporting considers all the parameters that affect the operation of the business. Depending on the kind of the business, a sustainable report should inform the stakeholders of the organisation’s competitive position (Yaghoobi, Bakhshimazdeh and Alikhasi, 2014). This is especially in the emerging and ever changing state of the sustainability space. This reporting should also provide all the relevant information of the organisation’s nature of things in terms of the assets and liabilities. This seeks to inform all the players of the business of the financial position of the business. The relevance of sustainable reporting is to ensure that the business considers transparency about the issues they may encounter whether those issues are profitable to the business or not. Word of mouth is not good enough in giving information about the sustainability of the business at hand. This calls for the provision of tangible evidence that will prove the credibility of the information provided. Proper guidelines should therefore be provided in ensuring proper and sustainable reporting. This way the organisation can be able to develop some desired level of trust to its stakeholders and the entities that are affected the business. Sustainable reporting also helps in developing some level of accountability by employees and this would inform better decision making by the operators of the business.

SASB reporting have put most of the organisations across the world to be more transparent in how they manage their resources. To ensure a SASB reporting, the organisations have to be in position to that the environmental and governance issues are managed effectively (Busco, Consolandi, Eccles and Sofra, 2020). The organisations should be in a position to not only give the financial reports of the business but should also provide the non-financial reports that are important in stimulating sustainable investments. The players in the business are keener in checking if the running of the business considers issues to do with the social responsibility, governance and the environment. The investors of the current days are not only considerate of the current position of the business. They are also considerate of the manner with which the organisations they are interested in would survive in the event of occurrence of unforeseen risks. The COVID-19 pandemic situation broad many organisations on their toes and most of them were pushed to do business more responsibly. The investors have also been keener in ensuring that they invest in more sustainable business that will survive in the event of occurrence of risks.

The Role of Purpose-Driven Organizations

The United Nations in 2015 adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a bid to make the implementation of the initiative more inclusive in the days to come. The main goal of the initiative was to curb the challenge of poverty that was highly as a result of unemployment and unfavourable business environment. Notably, the United Nation’s agenda was to boost economic growth and create an environment that would favour the growth of business. Food security, health and access to education were among some of the issues that were worth mentioning in the summit. The summit put emphasis in ensuring that there was creation of a common framework that favoured international collaboration in doing business. This also created a good avenue for resource mobilization to ensure domestic and international development through financing. Issues of frustration in doing business have been an issue of concern among the small scale entrepreneurs due to lack transparency in regulations. Business entities with a thicker pocket have been found to the issue of such ventures not to do business in most favourable ways. Some the practises conducted by some of the organisations have resulted in some of the small business to run out of business due the unfavourable conditions in the business environment. The UN summit sought to tackle some of these issues in bid to create a favourable environment for some of these small entities to do business. A good business environment means that most small and medium term entities will be able to do business. Particularly, the government will be able to earn from licencing some of these businesses. This revenue will in turn be used for economic development projects and especially, the infrastructural development projects that would in turn be a boost to favourable business environment. Improved infrastructure means that the business entities will be in better position to improve in its production activities.

There is dire need for reforms in the current state of governance and especially in the wake of need to partake in sustainable economic development. The investors play a vital role in putting the executives the given organisation in reaching particular goals. The management of the organisation may be forced to do all it takes to ensure the success of the organisation. As much as this could be good for the investors, the operators of the organisation may be forced to engage in governance habits that could be unfavourable to the other players in the economy (Ait Sidhoum & Serra, 2017). Pressure to meet the demands in the financial markets could result in some of the organisations engaging in practises that could have disregard to the physical and social environment. Sustainable government should imply that the management of the business should focus not only on the long term goals with disregard to the long term goals and vice versa. Rather business entity should consider both while at the same time have regard to issues of sustainable accountability to all the players in the business environment (Lanfermann et al., 2022).  To overcome some the pressure the executives face, there is need to create legal frameworks that put the investors in their rightful place in matters of corporate governance. This will propel the business entity in a directions that helps the organisation curb the risks that come with climate chance or particular trends like the COVID-19 situation that affected the global economy. Organisations should be in such a position that gives room to honest non-financial disclosures that informs the investors the direction the organisation intends to take in attainment of its financial goals. Such disclosures will give the investors enough insights in decision making.

The Significance of Sustainable Reporting

Some of the notable companies and organisations in the FTSE 100 that have embraced a sustainable approach in their economic development agenda are Coca-Cola HBC, BAT, International Consolidated Airlines, Shell, Unilever and Whitbread. The Coca-Cola Company has in the recent days unveiled an economic sustainable aimed at pushing for clean environment in a campaign dubbed, “World Without Waste.” The aim of these agenda is for the company to collaborate with global partners to find better packaging solutions that were environmentally friendly ("What is World Without Waste? | The Coca-Cola Company", 2022). The economic sustainability agenda of Shell Company on the other hand is to propel towards a cleaner energy future and making positive offerings to the society as a way of giving back its customers. Tackling climate change has been one of the challenge faced by the world. Shell has been on the forefront to support the Paris Agreement that was whose aim was to champion towards zero carbon emissions by 2050. International Consolidated Airlines was also supportive of this agenda as it drove towards adopting cleaner energy for its aircrafts. Unilever and Whitbread on the other hand chose to include provision of eco-friendly products. The two companies have adopted best case scenario approaches in waste management.  

Climate change has been an issue of concern to many organisations in the business world. Urgent solutions to curb climate change have been put in place as a priority to most of these organisation. One notable initiative is the so called circular economy that aims at creating systems that are restorative to minimise on the waste channelled into the environment (Webster, 2021). This approach is in particular important in attainment of efficient methods of production. One of the greatest challenges to this endeavour is the existence of rigid systems that it impossible to adopt sustainable approaches in doing business. This means that some the infrastructure will wasted in the restructuring drive. The agenda of CE is to promote reduction in waste that may cause pollution while at the same time championing for the use of renewable resources (Dong et al., 2021). Use of greener energy has been proved to be labour intensive and this has pushed most of the affected organisations into reluctance. There is a lot of concern into the practicability of such an initiative given the expectations of the project might not be economically viable. Recycling materials cannot be effective as it sounds considering the fact that the used materially cannot be effective as they were in their original forms. This means that most of the products from recycled materials could not be as durable as it seems. Recycling and reusing in itself requires use of energy and this means more energy would be required. It is worth noting that use of use of recycled materials could be more problematic to the environment as opposed to the use of virgin products.

The emergence of the COVID-19 has seen most of the businesses been affected and this has slept across all the sectors of the global economy. Poor economic times has seen the spike in the food crisis as most people lost their sources of income. The global recession in business has caused a financial crisis and the only way is the adoption of integrated solutions in doing business. The COVID-19 pandemic taught most of the players in the economy of the need to develop sustainable and collaborative ways in doing business. A collaborative approach of doing business means that the failure of one sector of the economy will be anchored by the succeeding one. Collaboration among the different stakeholders in the economy means that there would be development of a pool of ideas that can be used to create a sustainable working environment.

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