Overview
In the era of globalisation, organisations encounter a myriad of challenges, which may influence their sustainability efforts. Sustainability is a key objective of an organisation that wishes to gain a long-term competitive advantage. Since the goal of management in any organisation is to ensure that organisations survive environmental dynamics in the short and the long-term, it becomes interesting to study whether and how managers pay attention to sustainability in different organisations.
In the context of this paper, sustainability is used to refer to the “longevity, continuity, and capability to be maintained” (Weerawardena, McDonald, Sullivan 2010, p.347). In scholarly fronts, the issue of sustainability has arisen from the concerns of environmental degradation and the emergence of different opinions on issues of economic and social inequalities.
There is the need to find out whether organisations have roles in helping to make efforts to breach the gaps in these concerns in a sustainable way. Indeed, according to Barney (2001), organisations have to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (p.101).
This implies that stakeholders anticipate that organisations must develop the ability to sustain their own businesses in the future while helping societies to improve. Hence, in studying sustainability and the roles of management in enhancing it, it is equally important to study the roles of management in social corporate responsibility. Based on this line of argument, the focus of the proposal is to investigate whether management has any roles in enchaining sustainability in the globalisation era.
Aims and Objectives
Aim
Organisations are enormously investing in mechanisms of ensuring that they are able to run sustainable businesses by providing value to the owners and the communities within which they are established. Driven by this realisation, the aim of this paper is to study the perceptions of corporate managers on their roles in enhancing sustainability of their organisations and the mechanism they use to achieve this noble goal.
Objectives
The objective of the proposal is to provide a theoretical proposition on how organisations may help to enhance their sustainability in the era of globalisation. The relevance of this objective is pegged on the argument that globalisation has the impact of bringing together people from diverse backgrounds.
These people form a diverse consumption market that has immense concerns in the manner in which products produced by an organisation influence not only their utilities but also the environment. The proposal also determines whether organisations are well aware of these concerns raised by the globalised consumption market in an effort to highlight how this case may influence sustainability of organisations.
Literature Review
An immense body of literature is available investigating the roles of management in any organisation. In the attempt to build a sustainable business in the global market, people are becoming immensely concerned about the implications organisation’s products and services on the environments.
In fact, van Marrewijk and Werre (2003) argue that paying attention to the principles of corporate social responsibility constitutes one of the issues that may help managers to execute their managerial roles in a manner that showcases that they are friendly to the communities and other stakeholders within the environments in which their businesses are established.
Consideration of CSR principles in the discipline of organisational management implies that organisations have to behave in a socially responsible manner while establishing distribution networks for their products together with the treatment of the resulting wastes from the distributed products (Schramm 2011).
Maloni and Brown (2006) support this line of argument by further asserting that, for the last one decade, concerns of environmental sustainability have transgressed from “an obscure fringe concept to mainstream concern at the highest level of corporate governance” (p.35).
These changes have taken place following changes in the environment of businesses and the excessive anxieties for climatic changes together with the concerns of energy security from various stakeholders and advocacy groups across the globe.
Maloni and Brown (2006) reveal how “regulatory directives oblige companies to consider the environmental impacts of their products and operations” (p.43). While deriving strategies that are necessary for ensuring sustainable business operations, it is important to evaluate the relationship between the strategies and managerial directives for success to determine whether they are in conflict.
This process involves the attempts of ensuring that an organisation is socially responsible. This position means that, even though managers have noble roles of ensuring that their organisations serve their own interest and the interest of the owners through the adoption and enactment of management policies for global success, concerns also need to be paid on the protection and preservation of the environment of the organisation.
Hence, an organisation must comply with the pressures by various environmental advocacy groups (Collins, Roper & Lawrence 2010).
CSR is an incredible concern in the derivation of strategies for ensuring sustainable organisations especially following the heavy emphasis for an organisation to produce and distribute green products in the effort to curb environmental degradation. Adopting green strategies for supply chain management is not only a measure for ensuring sustainable supply chain management but also a gauge of ensuring that an organisation behaves and/or acts in a socially responsible way.
Managers who are policy formulators and makers within an organisation have a major stake towards the realisation of this noble goal (Hart & Milstein 1999). Ensuring sustainable operational strategies call for the deployment of a number of managerial principles, which have long-term impacts on the success of an organisation. Such principles must be directly related to the concerns of the people consuming products and services that are produced by an organisation.
Marketing theory provides incredible theoretical justification for the creation of sustainable organisations. Several decisive factors help in determining the nature of a business environment. They include demand and supply together with the general environment within which an organisation operates. These factors help in the determination of the appropriate competitive advantage that an organisation can adopt for long-term success (Bullinger, Kuhner & Van Hoof 2002: Chopra & Meindl 2004).
Supply side factors include employees, competitors, and suppliers. An organisation seeking to have a sustainable supply chain must organise its long-term and cost-effective strategies to meet the capabilities of employees to deliver its products in a socially responsible manner (Christopher 2005). This role must be done in a manner that offsets the capabilities of the competing supplier in the same industry especially those industries that deal with substitute commodities such as electronics.
The modern business environment is characterised by competition among organisations based on who is able to engineer the best strategies that will ensure that the business strategies adopted satisfy all stakeholders and interest groups. One of the competitive strategies is ensuring that organisations manufacture and/or distribute environmentally friendly products.
Orsato supports this strategy by positing that sustainability issues have resulted in empowering environmental protection organisations such as Greenpeace to exert even more pressure on chain supplies and logistics professionals to develop supply strategies that ensure that the environment remains safe to flora and fauna (2006, p.128).
In an organisational setting, management has the chief mandate of ensuring that policies and strategies are developed to enhance realisation of such concerns.
Notions of sustainability are related to the financial strength or economic prosperity in many organisations. This bottom line to sustainability is articulated to fact, “prosperous and financially sound organisations are likely to develop over times by pursuing stakeholders’ interests and perpetuating competitive advantage” (Steurer et al. 2005, p.264).
Choi and Ng (2011) argue that economic concern with regard to the roles of managers in enhancing organisational sustainability is related to financial risks, the increasing standards of living of not only the people working in an organisation but also persons living in the neighbourhoods of an organisation, and the curtailing incidence of job losses and insecurity.
This means that the scope of the responsibility of management in enhancing sustainability has expanded from economic prosperity from the paradigms of external stakeholders to internal stakeholders: employees (Pfeffer, 2010).
Consequently, in enhancing sustainability, management has the noble goal of ensuring that an organisation has individual and organisational relevance. Amid this effort, an organisation seeking to have a sustainable business must also pay attention to the impacts of its products and people consuming them on the effort to ensure that the concerns raised by consumers are consistent with the managerial strategies for enhancing long-term performance.
From the perceptive of the demand of products and services, customers are becoming concerned about the effect of products in terms of costs such as social costs that are likely to be created by the nature of goods and services supplied to them.
McKinno (2010) adds that customers also “increasingly recognise the value of supply chain services and quality as they are less likely to select products and services based on price” (p.27). It is through thinking about sustainability in the globalised organisations from this dimension that has seen corporations such Dell and Apple outperform other organisations in the adoption of sustainable managerial policies.
Another dimension of analysing the roles of management in creating a sustainable organisation is by focusing on environmental integrity. According to Anderson (2006), management has a role in ensuring that the operations of an organisation foster the safeguarding of the capacity of an organisation to meet the needs of future generations.
This effort is consistent with the traditional purpose of organisations to put in place policies that encourage “environmental protection, reduction of resource exploitation, emissions, and environmental risks and damage” (Agle & Caldwell 1999, p.327).
Managers can play a part in addressing the question of environmental sustainability by adopting integrated approaches incorporating the alteration of mindsets together with values of perception of the purpose of an organisation among stakeholders.
For instance, even though an organisation has the obligation of ensuring that it delivers value to owners, it is in the interest of maintaining its sustainability that it puts efforts of ensuring that it focuses on environmental protection even if such as an effort has no direct gains to its owner in terms of increasing its returns to investments.
By embracing such values, Wilkinson, Hill, and Gollan (2001) maintain, “organisational members may enhance sustainability to become prone to actions such as judicious utilisation of organisational resources and environmental-sensitive practices” (p.1492). In this line of thought, Pfeffer (2010) believes that managers handling human resources have the mandate to ensure that wastes are avoided in the effort to enhance environmental integrity.
Existing theories provide substantive grounds advocating for sustainable managerial policies. For instance, sustainable supply chain is essential in driving a competitive strategy for an organisation (Barney 2001).
The goal of adopting management policies that will enhance sustainability rests on the platforms of enhancing the performance of an organisation within an environment that is characterised by people who are in scrutiny of the operation of organisations’ quest to determine whether the organisations meet their needs.
In this line of argument, Barney (2001) maintains that there is an emerging body of research, which explores “the process in which high-performance human resource practices lead to a higher level of firm performance” (p.115). In fact, researchers such as Collins and Clark (2003) explore myriads of management values that are central to enhancing the sustainability of an organisation.
Nevertheless, it is arguable that there is a minimal literature that examines individual perceptions among managers on how they can enhance sustainability of their organisation beyond the economic sustainability paradigms. This research attempts to seal this gap. In the effort to achieve this noble goal, the researcher approaches the subject of the roles of management in enhancing sustainability through two main paradigms. These are economic sustainability and environmental integrity.
Research Design and Methodology
The proposed research is principally designed to be a descriptive in nature. This means that it aims at providing a description of how sustainability may be enhanced by managers. In the provision of this description, it becomes important to generate primary data that provides information on managers’ understanding of their roles in an organisation in matters of enhancing sustainability.
The researcher conducts his or her research in Silicon Valley industrial park. The primary tool for data collection chosen is questionnaires. This method is utilised since it makes it possible to collect large amounts of data from many people within a short period. Besides, it permits research to be conducted with minimal impacts on reliability together with validity of the data. Questionnaires also have the advantage of making it possible to contrast and/or compare findings.
The researcher has selected Silicon Valley as the place for data collection due to the growing concerns of environment impacts of electronic waste on people’s health. The researcher will confirm whether indeed managers whose organisations operate in the Silicon Valley are aware of enhancing environmental protection as a measure of enhancing sustainability for their organisations apart from paying central focus on economic prosperity as a means of enhancing economic sustainability of their organisations.
During the study, the researcher plans to recruit a sample of 130 managers whose organisations operate in Silicon Valley. Since Silicon Valley is an industrial park, it is anticipated that the researcher will save immense resources that could be spent in movement while administering the questionnaires if the target populations are largely disjointed in terms of their geographical locations.
Ethical Consideration
When primary research is conducted, the results and conclusions of the study are deployed in other different contexts such as drawing correlations. This means that, as part of ethical considerations in research, the data used in drawing inference needs to be reliable and valid. In the proposed research, before the researcher distributes the questionnaires for the study, he or she will consider informing all possible persons to be included in the sample about the intentions to conduct a study in their institution.
He or she will ascertain to them that the supplied information will neither be used nor be given to a third party for use in other purposes apart from helping to inform this research. Indeed, handling data with confidentiality is an essential ethical issue to consider while conducting any primary research (Fritzsche & Oz 2007).
The researcher is amply acquainted with research findings of the roles of managers in the social corporate responsibility in enhancing sustainability of an organisation from theoretical perspectives. Consequently, in the realm of ethical issues, while conducting the research, subjectivity vs. objectivity will be a critical issue to consider.
Fritzsche and Oz (2007) support this argument by further insisting that a researcher needs to “be aware of his or her own biases and opinions to take proactive strategies to ensure that such biasness does not find its way into the research” (p.335). It is also important to let the subjects know whether the research will treat the results in an anonymous manner or not. This research is principally designed to seek the views of managers on their perceived roles in enhancing sustainability.
Hence, any attempt to garner information about how organisations’ approaches to concepts such as social corporate responsibility by utilising easily accessible groups will be considered unethical and inconsistent with the objective of the research. The only persons to whom the questionnaires should be addressed are the managers. This way, it becomes possible to preserve and observe validity and reliability of the research findings.
Another important ethical consideration in this research is accurateness in reporting. The findings and inferences made should be drawn from the observations and analysis of the data related to the research. Consequently, the results should not be fabricated to suit the researcher’s anticipated results.
In this regard, Fritzsche and Oz (2007) argue that a researcher should not “take interview responses out of context and/or should not discuss small parts of observations without putting them into the appropriate context” (p.335). This means that, in the context of the proposed research, the data collected through questionnaires should be the only data utilised to make inferences on the perceived roles of management in enhancing sustainability in Silicon Valley.
A Statement of possible Outcomes
There has been growing concerns over the impacts of electronic wastes on the health of people. In Silicon Valley, which is the main industrial park where the silicon crystal is produced, it is expected that managers of various organisations operating in the industrial park will overwhelmingly consider social corporate responsibility driven by the concerns of environmental protection principles an incredible strategy for building sustainable organisations. The researcher also anticipates significant reference to economic and social issues as additional mechanisms of enhancing sustainability. However, this projection of results is anticipated to vary depending on the managers’ perception of the purpose of the existence of their organisations.
Research Planning
Research Timetable
Table 1 below show timelines for execution of the research
Tabl1: Research timetable
Risks Assessment and Risk Management
In any research that involves digging into different organisations’ strategies of success such as sustainability strategic decisions, incidences of partial compliance to provide the necessary information is expected. This would perhaps occur in the current research since organisations operating in Silicon Valley are in competition with one another.
Therefore, revealing information that may leak to other organisations would mean that sustainability strategic decisions of different organisations would be compromised. Sustainability is a critical aspect that organisations deploy to enhance their competitive advantage. This risk will be handled by confirming and assuring the organisations that the data will be handled in an anonymous manner. No single manager will be allowed to indicate the name of the organisation for which she or he works.
Other risks include the risks associated with the availability of adequate funding of the research. This risk is managed through seeking financial aid from the university if the researcher fails to raise adequate funds to fund all research activities including data gathering and analysis.
Resource Management
The resources that are necessary for executing the research will be partly provided for by the researcher and partly by the university. Since the university is an interested party on how the funds will be utilised, efforts are made to ensure that the study process is accountable.
This goal is accomplished by ensuring that a record is made for every expense. Since a mere recording of figures does not directly translate into guaranteed effort to enhance accountability, honesty is the guiding principle in the resource management approaches deployed in this research.
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