Bugen 5930 Business - Society Assessment Answers

In this assessment task, students are required to demonstrate not only their understandings of the themes but also their consideration of the implications for the business sector and/or the student’s current/future role in business. Students should provide their thoughts, feelings, responses, reactions, opinions and ideas on the material explored. Critical thinking should be demonstrated in these reflections.

Answer:

Business sustainability is the coordination and management of social, environmental and financial concerns and demands to ensure the ethical, responsible and ongoing success. In our class, we were taught about a goal of sustainability which requires time for Return on Investment. The organisations make initial investment and sustainability lead to the increased profitability. Sustainability has three pillars in a broader context which are social, economic and environmental demands. Triple Bottom Line makes the business organisations assess the organisational profits and which makes business to lead corporate sustainability solutions. Social bottom line mainly takes account of business profits made through human capital (Elkington, 2013). I think that social sustainability can be increased through beneficial labour and fair work culture. If the business organisations do not nurture good relations with the community; the client based of the business may shrink. I always feel that a desirable workplace helps the organisation to operate into the future and it may make workforce striving. In addition, environmental sustainability is about measuring the smaller impact on the environment on fewer natural resources. I worked as an apprentice in an organisation; where I noticed that controlling the environmental bottom line means monitoring, managing and reporting about the organisation's consumption of energy, managing waste and emission. As stated by Hussain, Rigoni & Orji (2018), the sustainability committee communicates the sustainability solution as it drives across the entire department. Finally, economic sustainability measures the impact of business on the economic environment. I personally think that companies should contribute to the economic environment as it makes aware of traditional profit of the organisation. We have been taught Carroll's Sustainability Pyramid where I learnt about philanthropic, ethical, legal and economic responsibilities of the organisation.  

When the businesses grow in complexity, the organisations feel pressure to communicate results along with a strategy to a wider range of external stakeholders. Financial capital is needed for the business and financial capital provides the traditional strength to the organisations. Financial capital provides an opportunity for development and growth of the organisation. The manufactured capital of an organisation is an integral part of the success of the organisation. Manufactured capital is associated with the products, physical distribution networks and services. When I was a part of an organisation; I used to check how the organisations maintained the services delivery process to the customers. The organisations need to analyse the returns and cost of the additional investment. The organisations need to maintain the capital spending, operational efficiency, regard to energy and it is involved in the financial review of the organisation. In addition, intellectual capitals are intangible assets as these are associated with the patents, trademarks and brand equity of the organisations. For example, Google made acquisition of Motorola and the Google used exclusively the patent of Motorola which put a value to the selling of the products. As stated by Beatti & Smith (2013), ideas of organisational strategies developed through intellectual capital can provide valuable insights into the operations of the organisation. Employees are the human capital of an organisation as employees are the most integrated and expensive assets of an organisation which present opportunities. I read on the internet that advanced technology companies also depend on human capital as the companies have to take care of the turnover, retaining and motivation of the companies. Social and relational capital is also an intangible asset as brand equity can increase the total asset, relationship with stakeholders and productions. Social and relational capital leads to the growth of the companies (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). Finally, natural capital is associated with the extractive industry like oil and gas sector or mining industry. Extraction of the natural capital can lead to the disrupting business community.

Comprehensive sustainability discusses the developmental phase through which the companies can check the progress towards the ecological and human sustainability (Dunphy, Benn & Griffiths, 2006). Rejection is the first phase and it involves in the part that organisational managers decide that all the resources like community infrastructure, employees and ecological environment must be gathered by the organisations for the immediate profit and economic gain. Non-responsiveness of the organisations comes from lack of ignorance rather than the active opposition (De Visscher, 2016). The organisations must follow the corporate ethic which is better than financial gain and I saw that organisations concentrate on business and it can ignore the sustainability. Compliance mainly focuses on maintaining the minimum standards and the management needs to reduce the risk of the meeting the organisational standards. Another phase of sustainability is efficiency as it reflects the awareness among the managers gains the advantage of sustainable practices. I think that these practices of sustainability can reduce the cost of the organisation along with increasing the efficiency. As stated by Dunphy, Benn & Griffiths (2006), strategic proactivity develops is utilised to stop emerging opportunities by improving the competitive advantage of the organisation. British Petroleum started the campaign of Beyond Petroleum to make itself a leader in the sustainable practices. BP makes the sustainable practices as part of the organisational goal repositioning itself. Sustaining corporation mainly shows the internalisation of active promotions and sustainability. Our supervisor discussed contributing to being equitable, just and democratic and human fulfilment. I have researched on sustainability and I found that emerging innovative firms are implementing the sustainability habits in their operations on daily basis. This process brings the stakeholders and sustainability can bring reputational capital and contribute to the community and ecological regeneration.

Siemens, the German company is the most energy efficient company and it produces more revenue per kilowatt used. Siemens scores high in every metric of the sustainability and the carbon footprint is also low for Siemens. This organisation dedicates towards making environment-friendly infrastructure with the products like green air conditioning and green heating machine. I found on the internet that Ford Motor follows the best supply chain management as Ford Motor started the amplified Partnership for A Cleaner Environment (PACE) Programme. Heifer International is another famous firm which has given 20.7 million families with training along with animals so that they can care and feed for themselves.  

Reference List

Beattie, V., & Smith, S. J. (2013). Value creation and business models: refocusing the intellectual capital debate. The British Accounting Review, 45(4), 243-254.

Benn, S., Edwards, M., & Williams, T. (2014). Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Abingdon: Routledge.

De Visscher, F. M. (2016). Financing Transitions: Managing capital and liquidity in the family business. Berlin: Springer.

Dunphy, D., Benn, S., & Griffiths, A., (2006). Enabling change for corporate sustainability: An integrated perspective. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 13(3), 156-165.

Elkington, J. (2013). Enter the triple bottom line. The triple bottom line. Abingdon: Routledge.

Hussain, N., Rigoni, U. & Orij, R.P., (2018). Corporate governance and sustainability performance: Analysis of triple bottom line performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 149(2), 411-432.