Sustainable Development in Business
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report is aimed at analyzing and studying the advancement and the
operation strategies for sustainable development. Information was
gathered, using business articles, on the strategies and techniques
required for sustainable development.
Sustainable development is not only important and essential for
environmental protection and socially well-being, but also for certain
economic goals a business may want to achieve. Much of the business
community is unaware of proper sustainable development policies;
sustainable management issues are often brought into awareness by risk
management channels.
The River Basin Management in the European Union (EU), has implemented
public participation in the planning and management process.
Communities are brought in to be involved with the development of
strategy and the delivery of these plans by means of management and
operations. There is a urge for companies to build their long-term
business strategies around three elements: ecosystem understanding;
economic growth; and social responsibility.
Technology cooperation is an important part of the strategy for
sustainable development, for it contributes to all aspects of
sustainable development: environmental, social and economic.
Technology cooperation involves cooperation in the transfer of skills
and knowledge; and sharing technology contributes to many gains to
society as a whole. It also benefits in improving efficiency, as well
as increasing knowledge and skills of a nation’s workforce.
Coordination amongst companies and stakeholders to act responsible is
propose...
... middle of paper ...
...g the initiative to
conduct sustainable development policies.
REFERENCES
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Briassoulis, Helen. “Sustainable Development and its Indicators:
Through a (Planner’s) Glass Darkly.” Journal of Environmental Planning
and Management (2001): 409-427 pp. Online. 18 February 2005.
Available
Chalk, Liz & Malcom Newson. “Environmental Capital: An Information
Core to Public Participation in Strategic Operational Decisions-The
Example of River ‘Best Practice’ Projects.” Journal of Environmental
Planning and Management (2004): 899-920 pp. Online. 18 February
2005.
Available
International Institute for Sustainable Development. “Business
Strategy for Sustainable Development: Leadership and Accountability
for the 90s.” Deloitte and Touche and the World Business Council:
Pg.1-19 Online
An enterprise can be defined as an entity that operates to seek profit and provide goods and services to the community at large. The business community consists of many different enterprises. Each enterprise is characterized by the type of goods and services that it aims to provide for its consumers. Through these processes, certain inputs and commitments are made to ensure the deliverance of goods that certify consumer needs. Throughout the years, the realization that businesses and the basic paradigm of trade and commerce have certain externalities that tends to render socio-economic progress on an economic, social and environmental standpoint. Academically characterized as having a sustainable business model, companies have been trying to find synergies between; profit making, social integration as a business and the preservation of the environment. The retail industry contributes to a significant amount GHG to the atmosphere. As a middleman between the
Wheelen, T. L., & Hunger, J. D. (2012). ‘Strategic management and business policy: toward global sustainability” (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
The following case study critiques Upton’s vision to establish a sustainable community through implementing comprehensive sustainable strategy. The urban periphery development is thought to demonstrate superior execution of sustainable principles in development (Jackson 2007). As a parallel, the report focuses on the development of Upton’s design code and demonstrates how large -scale mix-use developments can incorporate sustainable practice and principles of urban growth.
The problem that was investigated consisted of a question that Milton Friedman posed in one of his articles, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine in 1970. The question was, “What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities” (Friedman, 2007, p. 173)? Friedman (1970) elaborated on how businesses cannot have assigned responsibilities. Furthermore, he described how groups or individuals should be the only ones that can hold responsibilities, not businesses. He stated that associating responsibilities with the word business is too ambiguous. I will examine three discussion questions and three compare and contrast questions which Jennings (2009) posed in a case study that is related to Friedman’s (1970) article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”.
Protecting the environment has become an important issue in today’s society. There is no longer any doubt that businesses should consider their social responsibility and the impact of their activities on their stakeholders. In addition, firms are beginning to realize that corporate sustainability can prove to be a win win. There are multiple benefits of sustainability linked to costs, revenues, community relations, and more. The decision to strive for sustainability is obvious, but this process is easier said than done. Developing a sustainability strategy is difficult in itself, but the most challenging factor is the actual implementation. Marc J. Esptein, the author of Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environments, and Economic Impacts, provides companies with tactical methods and approaches, as well as real life examples and personal advice in order to assist in helping companies with achieving corporate sustainability.
Sustainability could be defined in many ways. It could be defined as the process to sustain a process or develop new technologies to reduce environment pollution. It also means a measurement how badly the environment is being polluted by other factors. I have to admit that sustainability is a great idea related to many fields such as healthy, economy, food, social, and etc. However, I still remember the first day of “Sustainable Business” class, Professor Laverty showed to my class an example of sustainable product with the idea of “produce more with less waste”. This example narrows me down to one idea of “Sustainable Business”, which is producing the product and services in an efficient and sustainable way without causing harms to environment. In this essay, I want to emphasize into impacts of businesses on environments, profitability of sustainable business, and responsibility of business.
Sustainability is broadly characterized as addressing the present generation’s needs without jeopardizing the future generations to address their own issues. Sustainable procedures are those that outcome from an establishment's commitment to environmental, social and economic, or the "triple bottom line." The term "sustainability," is the advancement of a procedure or management framework that serves to maintain economy and high standard of life while regarding the need to maintain natural resources and secure the nature.
The concept of sustainable development, a relatively new concept has now taken action into the structure of many present day organizations. Identified as “green growth”, the formation of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index provides a platform for managers to understand what it takes to be a sustainable organization. On the subject of sustainable development, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) sponsored by the United Nations published a report defining as,“Development that meets the needs of the current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations” (WCED, 1987). Sustainable development is composed of the following two notions. First is the idea of sustainability (to maintain), and secondly, development (to make better) (Bell, 2003). Improvement of our own lives today does not mean at the cost of damaging the quality of
Sustainability grows into a collective tenure in commercial morals, environs and is extensively used by the administrations, businesses, advisers etc. In recent times the conception of sustainability is widened,nowadays it not only comprisesecologicaldeliberation but also monetary and communityconcern. (Elkington, 1998).
This is the final stage where poorly managed businesses, those with thin margins or large borrowings are likely to close their operations. This economic stage is one where consumer confidence has dropped and income is low. A period of time has to pass to allow income and confidence to pick up and for the economy begin to its recovery.
Sustainability is a concept with a diverse array of meanings and definitions – a widely used glamorous, ambiguous, ambivalent and vague concept that is used by different stakeholder groups in various ways. Presumably to avoid noodling over a terminology or to avoid the confrontation with a definition, most widely the concept is broken down a planning process (c.f. e.g. Döring & Muraca, 2010). That is why most common sustainability is understood as sustainable development.1
Sustainability is about the planet- healthy relation among people, profit and planet. Individual effort to earn money by business activity in the earth should be harmless to environment where it operates and beneficial to the people surviving in that society.
Throughout this “Business and sustainable development” course, I am honored to have the opportunity to attend different guest speakers’ lectures and listen to them sharing about their past experiences as well as sharing their personal opinions about sustainable development. The guest speakers are from non-profit aid organization, both public and private sectors, as well as NGOs. Some of the main messages that I learned from these lectures include being innovative, listen and obtain advices from experts and other parties in order to make changes and raise awareness of different parties. Effective learning involves engaging more in the organization. It is also important to learn from the previous mistake, dare to be different and set up long
2013). There are other tools which play certain roles in sustainability, such as, Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA),Environmental Management Programmes (EMPs) etc. However, EIA provides chance of considering the environmental and social issues along with the economic issues in project development which create an outreach to sustainability. Furthermore, EIA definition and purpose suggest prospects for meeting the goals of sustainable development. Each process involve in EIA contributes in different ways to decision making for sustainable development. These processes and the roles will be briefly discussed in relation to the sustainable strategies involved. However, it is of importance to note that the roles of EIA in decision making for sustainable development are subject to the legislative rule in individual region or country (Morrison-Saunders & Retief 2012; Glasson et al. 2013). Nevertheless, there are basic standards of implementation set at international level in achieving sustainability goals for a viable
At present, our planet consistently experiences some global social, economic and environmental issues as well as uncertainties. To deal with this matter, a majority of the governments decided to pursue the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Enhanced by the United Nations, the goals are a definition of the global priorities as well as the goals of 2030. They depend on the essential and value-developing role of business organizations to offer the promise of sustainable and inclusive development. So far, the leadership of the United Nations has attempted to completely ensure that various specific changes in policy will enhance sustainability and which should have been achieved within the set deadline (Sachs 20). Further, it has included young leaders