Introduction
Sustainability is the economic development that meets the needs of the current generation without undermining the future generation’s ability to achieve their own needs. In business, sustainability means that a company is able to contribute to the economic, social and environmental growth of the society. Sustainability strategy means important activities that a company follows to ensure sustainable development. Maintaining sustainability is important since it is a regulation of the government and also a code of conduct by the industries. It also ensures good relationship and reputation within the community and other stakeholders. Organizations are now more sensitized on environmental, economic and social issues and are making great efforts to be better. The following are methods used by organizations in measuring and monitoring sustainability:
External pressure –this is the pressure the society and the government exert on the environment through environmental pollution, misuse of resources, laws, and regulations, waste disposal regulations, discrimination and non-discrimination laws among others. Another external pressure is the organization’s market in terms of public relations and customer satisfaction.
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Internal pressure – to achieve sustainability, organizations should ensure their visions, mission and strategies are well implemented. They should examine their strategic elements and how they affect those around them.
Business pressure- organizations should also consider the business sector, the customers, and the products. Companies that have a high impact on the environment tend to have poor sustainability performance since their natural resources are not consumed. These include chemical oil industries and paper mining. The oil and mining companies should focus on environmental health while those that offer services should focus on the social aspect. Different companies are exposed to political pressures, customers, and the community. These pressures drive them in achieving sustainability. Companies are now establishing codes of conducts and company ethics. They work together to establish employee’s standards.
Human and financial resources- organizations require finances to implement sustainability programs, pay their employees and train their staff on sustainability. The organization also needs educated and trained persons throughout the organization and staff who are committed to attaining sustainability. The staff and finances available will determine the sustainability implementation program.
The organizations face challenges when implementing the sustainability programs. This is because implementing sustainability is different from implementing other strategies in organizations. Sustainability measurements tend to be uncertain and long-term. There is also a challenge in day to day management and decision making. This is because of competition between the environmental, economic and social goals. Resource allocation also becomes difficult because the long-term gains and sustainability do not fit well. It is also not clear how stakeholders will respond. For companies that lead in their respective industries, media is involved in every action. However, it becomes difficult for managers to make decisions because of the costs of improving performances like social, economic and environmental performances. The cost of implementing sustainability is also changing. For example, technology needs to be improved to make pollution reduction implementation easier. Although sustainability is believed to provide financial gains, they can only be measured on long-term horizons. This makes it difficult to determine the social, economic and environmental performance. Due to this, standard implementation often fails.
To develop a sustainable culture in any organization, it should start from the company. The company should think about sustainability in terms of its employees. They should instill it in them at the beginning during hiring. The company should define what sustainability is according to their company and then communicate it to everyone within the organization. They should, therefore, appoint several individuals to help implement it. The company should also be open to new ideas. They should be ready to learn from outside and also encourage its employees to interact with others and bring in new ideas. Companies should join organizations and associations to ensure proper networking.
Top managers should exercise leadership and determine what needs to be done to achieve sustainability integration. They should help other workers to deal with the tradeoffs by reinforcing objectives throughout the organization. A senior executive manager at Nike stated that “consistent support of leaders is more important than refined measures on environmental impact and compliance.” Leaders should choose a consistent strategy. This ensures successful implementation of sustainability. Management is also supposed to decide on how to integrate social, economic and environmental strategies in and implementation of the sustainability strategy. Companies should work towards making their employees more passionate about maintaining sustainability. This creates a culture that supports sustainability implementation and it should be reflected in the companies’ missions and vision statements. This motivates the employees and they take sustainability implementation seriously.
Although there may be a lot of resistance to sustainability it can be controlled through ensuring effective change management at the beginning. The management should look at all the possible causes of resistance and look for ways of avoiding them. This can be achieved through stating the sustainability goal in the vision and mission statements, communicating it to employees when hiring and also training the employees on sustainability. This will make it a culture that must be followed and any possible resistance will be minimized. Managers and supervisors should ensure they study employees well. This helps to identify any resistance gaps and work towards controlling them. Managers should also look deeper at the causes of resistance and address them. Senior leaders should act as an example to the junior employees by showing their commitment and seriousness to change.
Conclusion
Sustainability has been defined as the economic development that meets the needs of the current generation without affecting the future generation’s ability to meet their own needs. There are several methods that organizations can use to achieve successful implementation of sustainability. These include the external pressures, internal pressures, business pressure and the human and financial resources. Several challenges are however faced during the implementation of sustainability. These include financial challenges, resistance from the employees, and competition between environmental, economic and social aspects among others. Managers and employees play a big role in ensuring management of environmental changes through working as a team to ensure that change is attained. Although resistance may arise during implementation of sustainability, it can be controlled through proper communication across the organization and also find the root cause of the resistance and address it.
Reference
Stead, J. G., & Stead, W. E. (2013). Sustainable strategic management . ME Sharpe: New York.
