Journey to Organizational Sustainability.

 Creating a sustainable organization.

Sustainability is a result of influences on the social, environmentally, and economically due to the organizational decisions and behaviours in short period as well as long. Organizational leadership mission is to drive the business with the limitations of the environmental, economic, and social limitation and find more opportunities to add value or profit to the business (Kohl, 2016).

Sustainable organization is not only focus  on the well-being of employees or the standard of the company. The organization should take responsibilities on  some other crucial areas as well. To become a great organization, there should be some strategical approaches to sustain the environment, nature,  community or the society. Therefore, sustainability has become as a trending topic in the current context. And that add values to create an atmosphere that keep everyone happy. To create such an organization, Human resource leadership must play a critical role and take majority of the responsibilities to drive the culture.

Sustainable HRM function focuses on the activities that uplift the business profit margins as well as enhance the human, social, and environment sustainability. This is great execution of well-planned and established processes of HR leadership (Mariappanadar, 2019).

The utilization of strategies and practices that leads to enhance the accomplishment of financial, social, and ecological targets, and creating an impact to inside and outside of the organization by minimizing or controlling the possible side effects and negative feedbacks that can be appear in future (Ehnert et al, 2013) 

The great business writer and the founder of the Management consultancy sustainability, John Elkington introduced a great model to drive the organization towards a sustainable growth. This concept is known as “Triple Bottom Line” (Miller, 2020).

Image 01: Elkington's Triple Bottom Line Concept on Sustainability (www.chainpoint.com, 2020)

Characteristic of a Sustainable organization.

Ccompare with the traditional business mindset and a sustainable organization, huge differentiations can be identified. Even the sustainable organization also focus on the profitability of the business. But that is not the only focus. Organization leadership is interested on the social and environmental value addition as well. The organization policies and procedure has been developed to create positive impact to those areas. Therefore, a sustainable organization can be very clearly identified in the business environment.

When consider about the social influences,  organization are prioritizing on the well-being of the community. That always take actions or decisions to support to enhance the living standards in the society. That can be uplifting education, improving the hygiene and support to overcome the poverty. These organizations culture, promotes good ethics and give precedence for human rights in both internal and external environments.  And doesn’t encourage the child labour. Therefore, one of their mission is to uplift the social capital.

Also, the organization take certain responsibilities on the environment as well. Strategies and policies in the organization has aligned to support to maintain the ecosystem and equilibrium in the nature. Therefore, this organization focus on the conservation of the nature and the natural resources. By initiating project such as reforestation, introducing environmentally friendly products the organization tries to deliver a message to the community. That organization culture communicating to minimize the human activities that impact on polluting the water, air, ocean by showing great examples from their internal activities. Therefore, develop and support to the natural capital is another mission of such organization.

 

Conclusion

A great organization culture drives more towards a sustainable growth. To accelerate the driving mechanism organizational leadership should understand on the organization behaviours and their implications to the society, environment, and economy. Therefore, developing and practicing the business concept that support on the mentioned areas, can encourage the organization to become a sustainable organization that add values to entire world and its ecosystem.

 

 References.

Ehnert, I., Harry, W., & Zink, K. J. (2013). Sustainability & Human Resources Management - Developing Sustainable Business organization. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.

Ehrnet, I. (2009). Sustainable Human Resource Management: A conceptual and exploratory analysis from a paradox perspective. London: Springer Science & Business Media.

Kohl, K. (2016). Becoming a Sustainable Organization: A Project and Portfolio Management Approach. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Mariappanadar, S. (2019). Sustainable Human Resource Management: Strategies, Practices and Challenges. London: Red Global Press.

Miller, K. (2020, December 08). http://www.hbs.edu/. Retrieved from https://online.hbs.edu/: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-the-triple-bottom-line

Soyka, P. A. (2012). Creating a Sustainable Organization: Approaches for Enhancing Corporate. New Jersey: FT Press, 2012.

Taylor, G. (2020, October 21). https://www.chainpoint.com/. Retrieved from https://www.chainpoint.com/: https://blog.chainpoint.com/blog/triple-bottom-line-measuring-social-and-environmental-kpis