GLOBAL SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY Essay Example

Global social sustainability

Contents

Executive summary

This report tries to handle the issue of sustainability and the effects it has on the performances of industries and enterprises, a special concentration is emphasized on the manufacturing sector. There are some issues that must be put into consideration in a production environment. In manufacturing industry operations, several factors must be taken into consideration other than profit alone; factors like environmental and social performance are to be considered so as to realize the long-term development of the company. It is a decision that all the industries that have the desire to succeed have to make, they are supposed to set aside resources to environmental and social practices as this will be an advantage to such companies among their competitors. Similarly, it is important for businesses during decision-making processes that are connected to operations to have the knowledge on how to organize revenues, customers, as well as the world.

The main purpose for carrying out this research is examining the recent situations concerning industries’ and enterprises’ sustainable ideas and investigates the connection that exists between these practices and performances of industries. The performances include financial performances, operational performance, innovation performance, social performance and environmental performance. Literature review was conducted to discover sustainable issues that are considered to be of major importance in the process of decision making in these industries operations. Later the findings were synthesized into a theoretical framework that could be adopted to be used as the foundation for designing the instrument of the research that has been utilized in this report.

The empirical study was done to examine the connection that is on environmental management practices and the performance of the enterprise or the company. The findings revealed that a lot of environmental management practices had a strong effect on the performance of innovation. Another thing is that the result showed that there are many social sustainability indicators, for instance, product responsibility, human rights, and society, all these showed remarkable and positive correspondence with return on equity in some companies.

According to the research findings, the outcome of the study revealed that a sustainable improvement practice showed a positive effect on the corporation performance. A percentage of the environmental and social development practices proved that there is a straight and optimistic correspondence to both the product and process innovation. According to the results, it recommended that an improved collaboration with the stakeholders on environmental duties can be used as a tool for strengthening the green organizational capabilities of the main companies.

This research improves the understanding of how social, environmental, and perspectives can influence the performance of companies. It offers companies and enterprises the chances of integrating sustainability into their company’s operations strategies so as to sustain their operations over a long period.

Introduction

There is a greater concern on the issue of sustainability in the manufacturing industries. Apart from the high pressure that these companies face from their competitors, they are also obliged to pay attention to the utilization of resources, treatment of wastes from these companies, air emissions, environmental pollution plus the welfare of their workers. If the managers fail to evaluate and manage these sustainability issues, it can spoil the image of a company which in turn will automatically interfere with their performance (Chen, 2015).

Examples of companies that have experienced poor performance due to these failures include Apple Inc. this was when they decided to hire children to work in their company as they were producing iPhones. Coca-Cola Company was blamed to have polluted water in India (Lee, et al, 2016), and Dell was accused of disposing of their electronics in an environmentally unfriendly way. On the other hand, the dairy manufacturers suffered from safety crises too (Fierro, Hill, & Johnson, 2016).These companies had to adopt new measures that could help them rebuild their spoiled images.

Such misbehaviors from companies on their environmental and social management have a negative impact on the performance of enterprises; another thing is that it destroys the reputation of companies in away. The companies mentioned above can prove the significance of understanding sustainability management and the connection it has on companies’ reputation plus the performance (Chen, 2015).

Methodology

For the researchers to achieve the objectives of the research there were various approaches that were used to handle different problems related to sustainability and company performances. In this research secondary that was obtained from Global Reporting Initiative reports was used. In many occasions, the reports from this initiative have been used in measuring the sustainability indicators. The reason for using the data from this initiative is because the advantages that are related to using it. The first reason is that they are accepted internationally, the second thing is that they have sufficient component that is connected to the issues of the environment. Another method that was used to conduct this research was survey so as to understand fully and verify the findings on this study.

Related organizational theory

Various theories are related to this topic, the theories play a significant role in the sustainability and performance of a company; the different theories include institutional theory; this theory was established in the year 1948 (Oghenejobo, 2014). It states that the way a company behaves can influence the environment where the institution is located, (In Ehnert, et al, 2014). The idea that this theory is trying to push is that organizations must obey the rules and norms that exist within their environment for them to gain support and be seen as legitimate (Crossick, & Reuter, 2016).

There are different kinds o pressure related to this theory, for instance, coercive pressure which comes mainly from the government in adopting environmental management practices. Another pressure is known as the normative pressure which is driven by the consumers (Vecchi, et al, 2016). Lastly, mimetic pressure this is from those companies that try to imitate the behaviors of other companies so compete in the market and become successful and avoid the complex environmental risks (Oghenejobo, 2014).

Another theory is known as the stakeholder theory; this tries to analyze the various requirements of a company in identifying the needs of their stakeholders. It helps managers in planning their sustainability strategies. Resource dependence theory suggests that every organization depends on others within their environment so as to confirm their long run viability (Valencia, 2016). Every organization must depend on other organization so as to secure strategically important resources, this theory helps in controlling environmental risks that exist between partners (Vecchi, et al, 2016).

Discussions and conclusion

The aim of this research is to examine the connection that is between sustainability practices and the company performance (In Clark, et al, 2014). Creating a comprehensive analysis on sustainability in manufacturing industries is an important responsibility. According to the research, it showed that most companies still lag behind in practicing global sustainability about social responsibilities on matters concerning the environment sustainability and economic sustainability just like in the coca cola company (Vázquez-Brust, et al, 2014).

Both the formal and informal contexts may affect the operations of companies (Crossick, 2016). The outcomes of this research do not show the substantial differences that exist between the subsectors of the industries. At the same time, there is the difference that exists between economic, environmental and social dimensions in countries such as Sweden, China, and India under such circumstances (Valencia, 2016).

Manufacturing industry and service industry at some point might show different focuses about the issues of sustainability. This can be seen when analyzing service industry on the issue of analyzing carbon dioxide emissions in the processes of production as compared to the manufacturing industry (In Dubey, et al, 2016).

This research supports various notions that help in environmental, economic and social sustainability. The empirical that was conducted on the industry shows that the focal companies are supposed to have a better collaborative relationship with the stakeholders, for instance, their suppliers so as to reduce the risks and strengthen the green capabilities. In conclusion, this study examined the sustainability concerns in industries and enterprises, and at the end, it summarized the perspectives, approaches and all the factors that are connected to various types of sustainability (Crossick, & Reuter, 2016).

Recommendations

The outcome of this research shows that companies need to put a lot of emphasis on the areas that help in developing the right measures and policies on the issue of social sustainability. For companies to achieve a balance that exists between environmental, social and economic sustainability, there are a lot of efforts that must be put into consideration (Vecchi, & Buckley, 2016). Companies should include the operations strategy perspective into the sustainability aspects; another thing is that enterprises should use GRI reporting system so as to develop an advanced partnership with their suppliers (In Dubey, et al, 2016).

Industries should concentrate on ways through which they can improve the lives of the people that operations affect directly or indirectly. This could be done through creating decent jobs, products, and services that would assist in meeting the basic desires. They should also come up with strategic social investments and try and promote public policies that help in promoting social sustainability. Lastly, they should try to partner with other enterprises so as to pull strengths that would make a positive result (Lee, et al, 2016).

References

Academy of Marketing Science, & In Dato-on, M. C. (2014). The sustainable global marketplace: Proceedings of the 2011 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference

Chen, L., & Linköpings universitet. (2015). Sustainability and company performance: Evidence from the manufacturing industry. Linköping: Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University.

Crossick, S., & Reuter, E. (2016). China-EU: A common future. New Jersey: World Scientific.

Fierro, R. S., Hill, D. M., & Johnson, J. (2016). Benefit Corporations and Measures of Social Impact: Evaluation Insight, Opportunities, and Limitations.

Heizer, J. (2016). Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.

In Clark, W. W. (2014). Global sustainable communities handbook: Green design technologies.

In Dubey, R., & In Gunasekaran, A. (2016). Strategic management of sustainable manufacturing operations.

In Ehnert, I., In Harry, W., & In Zink, K. J. (2014). Sustainability and human resource management: Developing sustainable business organizations.

In Harris, H., In Sandhu, S., & In McKenzie, S. (2014). Linking local and global sustainability.

Lee, K. H., & Vachon, S. (2016). Supply Chain Sustainability Risk. In Business Value and Sustainability (pp. 245-280). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Oghenejobo, M. (2014). Strategic leadership for sustainable personal and organizational success. Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Paris). (2014). Measuring sustainable development: Integrated economic, environmental and social frameworks. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Valencia, M. J. (2016). 13 The Spratly Imbroglio in. Southeast Asia in the New World Order: The Political Economy of a Dynamic Region, 244.

Vázquez-Brust, D. A., Sarkis, J., & Cordeiro, J. J. (2014). Collaboration for Sustainability and Innovation: A Role For Sustainability Driven by the Global South?: A Cross-Border, Multi-Stakeholder Perspective. Dordrecht: Springer.

Vecchi, A., & Buckley, C. (2016). Handbook of research on global fashion management and merchandising. Hershey: Business Science Reference.