Organisation Theory and Behaviour - Coursework Example

?Introduction and Motivation Recently government, organization and even general public have started showing considerable concern about the inadvertent social, economic, and environmental penalty of quick economic growth, population growth and rapid utilization of the natural resources, as a result of which the concept of sustainability has emerged. Sustainability is important to ensure that water, minerals, other materials and resources are available and will be available in future. Sustainability puts individual actions into a broader context, that is, global perspective. It means that individuals are responsible for the environment1. Everything that a human being needs for his/her survival, health and safety is dependant, either directly or indirectly, on the natural environment.  The concept of sustainability is based on this simple principle. Sustainability helps in creating and maintaining the environment under which nature and human can subsist in productive accord that allows satisfying the social and economic needs of present and future generations2. As there has been growing interest in the concept of sustainability in recent years, the focus of organizations has also shifted towards this concept. There are three assumptions as to why managers would show interest in sustainability. The first being, that most of the businesses have interest in creating value in the long-standing. Managers are very much concerned about the repute of the organization. With people being more aware about how an organization might harm the environment and nature has resulted in mangers being responsible socially and economically3. Second of these is that if the conduct of organization is destructive and is harmful to the social and natural environment, it will ultimately pressurize the managers in shape of direct or indirect costs. Formal penalties might be imposed by the government or damaged relationship with important stakeholders such as; shareholders, employees and customers as consequences of careless and irresponsible social behaviour may result in loss of value. Thirdly, new mercantile opportunities for business can be created by pursuing sustainable growth. This would help in developing and marketing new services and goods that would undoubtedly increase profits and assist in achieving the objective of sustainability4. COMMENTS, CRITIC, EVALUATE AND APPLICATION As more emphasis is placed on sustainability the leaders of businesses, inclusive of multinational organizations as well as the singularly owned companies, face the unprecedented and unique challenge of planning organization culture that cater to achieve sustainability. The organization design and culture should be such that, that it serves to a broad range of stakeholders and ensures that business is sustainable within their physical, market, social, and financial realms. The corporate board of directors must be able to provide strategic directions and an oversight that stretches further than short-term financial performance and recognize social, environmental and governance responsibility of the organization and are essential to its performance in the long-term sustainability5. This requires organizations to be tactically positioned within the distinctive intersection of corporate citizenship, environmental stewardship, financial strength, and product/service excellence. A great amount of attention is required to the intricacies of the internal and external environments of the organization for designing it to achieve and uphold a strategic outlook deftly balanced within the nexus of sustainability. In order to achieve this balance, leaders must seek to build up an incorporated perceptive of organization culture, design and sustainability by: Organization’s background and the cultural mind-sets of its employees must be explored in order to design effective, high quality, and sustainable work environments; cultural factors must be considered and used to impede and facilitate sustainable organization design; Impact of sustainable design must be determined upon the numerous existing cultures. Fundamentally, culture of the organization is its personality. Culture is comprised of the values, assumptions, norms, behaviours of its members and their tangible signs. To achieve sustainability it must be inculcated in the very core of organization culture. Employees must be explained the significance of the concept of sustainability and as how it can be beneficial and profitable for the business6. There is a strong agreement that sustainability influences the culture of organizations as it has material impact and will continue to have this impact on how they think and act. Sustainability could be harmful to the business if it is not understood properly and is not applied to day to day decision making. Sustainability is not about public relations, it’s about culture7. Over the time, sustainability is becoming increasingly significant to the management and the business strategy, and failure in understanding and integrating the concepts of sustainability might result in failure of the organization. To amalgamate sustainability as part of their strategy, organizations need to develop new characteristics and capabilities. They must be able to work together across internal and external boundaries, and should be capable of operating on system wide basis. This will ensure that when a new concept is introduced it can be incorporated with other functions taking place in the organization8. Though there is great degree of acceptance of the concept of sustainability and of the idea of how important it is to pursue sustainable development, but still there are certain aspects of sustainability which are not fully understood. It can be said that the idea is abstract9. As misconceptions have negative impacts many organizations are reluctant to adopt this concept. If properly looked at and carefully referred to sustainability is as close to one’s life as it could be. It is part of every decision varying from purchasing electricity to manufacturing products or providing services. Sustainable use of scarce resources requires adapted knowledge and, culture and practices that promote sustainability10. It is difficult to manage sustainability as the initiatives taken for incorporating sustainability are particularly complex to measure. It affects the society and people at macro level therefore organizational implications are not well defined. Secondly, the impacts are not immediately obvious. Many a times, the effects of unfriendly environmental practices take decades or sometimes centuries to show. The organizations can easily get away with such practices as some companies intend to generate short term profits and are not concerned with the long term consequences. The ultimate price for the consequences is paid by the community in shape of environmental degradation, diminishing scarce resources and social dislocation. It is still possible for organizations to cause considerable harm, close their business and re-open under new identity the very next day. Even though such companies exist, there is a growing trend towards organizations going green and adopting the idea of sustainability and amalgamating it into culture and design of their structure and accepting their responsibility towards well-being of people and nature11. RECOMMENDATIONS Understanding Sustainability: The first and foremost step towards acceptance is the understanding of a particular concept. Managers need to have a thorough understanding of sustainability. The only endangered elements are not liveable climate, clean water and air and nature but also psychological health, heritage and history community meaningful work, cultural diversity, popular empowerment and intellectual openness are also needed to be sustained. Only going green and saving the environment from pollution causing gasses is not enough, the decisions and policies must be made which support efficient use of energy, land, money and other materials12. While inculcating the aspect of sustainability in the decisions, managers must be careful that they do not come into conflict with already existing organizational objectives. At times sustainability may jeopardize the organizational culture and interdepartmental social, cultural or racial conflicts may arise if the ideology is not properly understood. Sustainability is about peaceful and harmonized existence between communities that do not endanger the natural environment. Sustainability must be applied strategically and tactfully so that the business is benefitted by it and does not incur losses13. Motivate the Employees to be Socially Responsible: Companies must motivate and empower employees to carry out sustainability initiatives. With saving the environment it would also draw employees to work for that particular company. Employees like to work for sustainable firms, therefore this knowledge can be used to attract the best employees and retain them. To do this, the company managers must create employee incentive plans which would be valued by the employees. Good employees would attract more good employees, which would move the firm towards upright and lasting cycle of sustainability. This mechanism would help organization to leverage sustainability values and initiatives, creating a positive working environment with right capacity internally and making sure that progress is made towards achieving sustainability. Sustainable Sourcing: Businesses must purchase services and products that are socially and environmentally responsible. The process of identifying suppliers who are sustainable is not necessarily easy and clear-cut. The decisions regarding sustainable sourcing often entail industry specific information and practices. Sometimes such data may be required which is just not available. In such cases, it is advisable to identify a set of finest practices for sustainable sourcing that would be the benchmark for the organization and also guide it to manage the supply chain14. This might also yield opportunities for the leading organizations to showcase the good practices of them being socially and environmentally responsible. Sustainable sourcing not only helps in achieving sustainability, it also helps to mitigate and mange risks. The practice of sustainable sourcing is about aligning business and societal good. If done in a proper way it would help in positive positioning of the company in the mind-set of the customers and people might prefer buying from such a company15. Use Renewable Energy Resources: Instead of utilizing non-renewable energy resources like fossil fuels, use of renewable resources must be appreciated. Solar radiation, tides, winds etc. are some of the renewable energy resources16. The above mentioned energy resources if not used today will not remain for use in the future. If the sun rays received today are not utilized or trapped, they will not be available to use tomorrow. And if used today, it will not in any way effect the rate by which it can be used in future. Fossil fuels totally change when they are utilized. Such energy resources cannot be reused or recreated. Though sun is not even infinite resource and very slowly running down but it is more sensible to use energy from the solar radiation than produce energy from fossils17. Integrate Sustainability into each Department and hence into the Core of the Business: Sustainability managers are very often asked to explain their sustainability decisions. They even have to defend the activities related to sustainability. Other decision making units such as financial aspect, does not as yet fully understand the worth of sustainability and investments made keeping in view the sustainability concept. To justify their decisions sustainability managers must know how exactly the returns affect the business in short run and long run. These types of investments are usually long-term and do not gain tangible rewards. It is important that the organization as a whole have knowledge that how these decisions will benefit the business. Sustainability must be accepted by the whole organization as a value creating activity18. CONCLUSION In a general sense, sustainability can be seen as satisfying the present needs and not compromising abilities of future generations to fulfil their needs. Environmentalists and researchers had warned about the consequences that are faced today, a long time back. It is not the responsibility of only government to make sure the well-being of environment and the nature. The responsibility lies on societies, organizations and on each and every individual19. Every person in a society plays synchronized, multiple roles in the civil society, market and the state. An individual is at the same time a citizen, an employee, a parent, an employer, a volunteer, an investor, a buyer and so on. It is a major fact about one’s identity and a way in which individuals must think about sustainability. To understand and practice sustainability a holistic approach towards the betterment of world should be developed. Likewise, a holistic approach is required to integrate sustainability in the case of businesses as well along with understanding of how to generally execute strategies and sustainability strategies specifically20. Works Cited: Bansal, T., and Laughland, P., 2011, ‘The top ten reasons why Business are not more Sustainable,’ Ivey Business Journal; Improving the Practice of Management, http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/social-responsibility/the-top-ten-reasons-why-businesses-aren%E2%80%99t-more-sustainable (accessed October 7, 2011) Bern, M,. Townend, A., Khayat, Z., Balagopal, B., Reeves, M,. 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L. 2000, ‘Dealing with misconceptions on the concept of sustainability’, Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 1 (1):9–19 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1502501&show=abstract (accessed October 7, 2011) Understanding Sustainability, 2009, Humanities and Social Sciences, http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=166467 (accessed October 7, 2011) Read More