Influence of Environmental Sustainability on Organizational Behavior

This article explores the influence of environmental sustainability on organizational behavior and discusses the initiatives taken by Coca Cola to promote environmental stability. It also provides recommendations for improving environmental stability in organizations.

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ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR
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2-15-2019

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 1
Executive summary
Environmental sustainability in business includes the steps taken by the organization to sustain
the environmental factors, and avoid degradation or depletion of natural resources. This is to
ensure the quality of the environment for the long term. For this, the Coca cola, a beverage
company will be considered for the discussion.
The environmental stability has influenced the organizational behavior, an organization is largely
depended on the technology, physical structures, formal programme, and systems while
implementing the corporate greening, the individuals of the organization or the workforces need
to contribute to the leaders of the organization that is implementing the environmental stability in
the organization. For instance, CEO of Coca Cola, James Quincey has announced in the world
economic forum meeting 2019, related to transforming the plastic economy
Major recommendation for improves the environmental stability for the organizations were
sustainability coordinator job position, various conservation initiative, increase in
communication efforts, create public commitment, and promotion of integration of sustainable
policies and principles.

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Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Influence of environmental sustainability on organizational behavior............................................4
Job design, goal setting, and flexible work arrangements...............................................................5
Implementation of organizational policies......................................................................................8
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 3
Introduction
An organization is associated with the environment it is conducting business, and using
environmental resources. Environmental sustainability in business includes the steps taken by the
organization to sustain the environmental factors, and avoid degradation or depletion of natural
resources. This is to ensure the quality of the environment for the long term (Bombiak 2018).
Moreover, it can be said that it is the rate of pollution creation, renewable resources harvest, and
depletion of nonrenewable resources, which can be indefinitely continued, which are said to be
not sustainable. This is considered as one of the major aspect, which the business in today’s
world is important to adapt to its activities, to sustain in the environment, the reason being the
legal requirement or social responsibility of the company towards the society and environment.
There are various legal regulations developed (Doppell 2017)
Various companies have initiated with a different project for these concern, in the report for
better analysis of the aspect, the Coca-cola case would be considered (Coca-colacompany.com
2018).

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Influence of environmental sustainability on organizational behavior
For working towards environmental stability, the organization generally includes towards the
traditional way of working, for which the organizational behaviors has to be changed, in order to
implement environmental stability. The environmental stability has influenced the organizational
behavior, an organization is largely depended on the technology, physical structures, formal
programme, and systems while implementing the corporate greening, the individuals of the
organization or the workforces need to contribute to the leaders of the organization, that is
implementing the environmental stability in the organization. Thus, for effective and efficient
implementation of the greening efforts of the organization are largely dependent on the level to
which the workforce of the organization will embrace the green behavior actively. It is important
to understand the reason for one’s behavior in an organization and environmental stability is
vague without the integration of all the employees’ efforts towards the same (Epstein 2018).
Some of the major initiatives took by the coca cola in favor of environmental stability includes
the latest transformational strategy according to company’s CEO James Quincey has announced
in the world economic forum meeting 2019, related to transforming the plastic economy (coca-
cola.co.uk, Corporate Sustainability Report 2017). He has initiated the world without waste a
year ago. The company has introduced the plant bottle technology for creating a fully recyclable
plastic bottle, which is specifically created partially from plants. For instance, this initiative
would bring the major change management in the organization, where the change would be
through the process, the job role of the employees and much more (Mohan, Frey and Shibu
2017). This can only be successful only if all the employees integrate their efforts to implement
the initiative or work towards the goal. Therefore, it reflects the influence of environmental

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 5
stability on organizational behavior. For this purpose, the company has built long-term
partnerships, which will help them to eliminate the pollution by plastic by creating a circular
economy (coca-colacompany 2019).
According to the sustainability report 2018 of Coca Cola, the company initiated to invest in the
quality of water and availability of water. The reason being water is the most important resource
that the company is using in producing most of its drinks or beverages to offer the customer.
Therefore, the responsibility of the company increases towards this resource. The effect of
environmental stability influence on organizational behavior to large extent, especially, in the
regions where water stress is a major challenge (Minton and Kahle 2018). The company is more
stable in on the global scale have focused on improving the efficiency of water resources,
managing wastewater, replenishing the use of water, and change in the supply chain as
agricultural ingredients. Therefore, the major influences are in form of change through the
process, product system, and marketing activities (coca-colacompany.com 2019).
Figure 1: (Source: (coca-colacompany, 2017-water 2019)
Job design, goal setting, and flexible work arrangements
Job design means task design, which is the major responsibility of human resource management
in the organization. This includes the specification of methods, contents, and job relationship for
satisfying the organizational requirement and technological requirement, the personal and social

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 6
requirement of each employee or the jobholder (Gencer 2017). The major aim of the job design
is to enhance the satisfaction of employee through his job, to improve the quality of performance
and to minimize the problems or grievances of eth employees. Considering the environmental
stability, the job role of each individual is changed (Page 2014). For instance, while
implementing any imitative related to environmental sustainability. The job designing techniques
that are job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and job simplification could be useful at
the time of implementing the environmental sustainability initiative by the organization.
Moreover, most of the change through the implementation of the project leads to the change in
organization structure, which will eventually apply one of the job design approaches (Goffin
2017).
Environmental stability through goal setting – the goal is the major aspect provided by the top
managers, which provide direct or aim for the employees to accomplish in the specific
timeframe. The goals of the company must include the environmental factors to make people in
organization work for it (Russell, J.D and Hull 2017). For instance, the coca- cola company has
provided the 2020 goals for environmental stability, which includes goals related to four major
aspects, like water stewardship, energy and climate, packaging, and agriculture. Some of these
goals are the reduction of CO2 emissions by 25 percent through the value chain of the company
for which the job design is dependent according to it. The major initiative for this is the
installation of 1.4 million globally that is HFC free coolers, this requires the personnel to
perform, according to which the jobs are designed in the organization (coca-colacompany, our-
2020-environment-goals-infographic 2019).

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 7

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 8
Figure 2: (Source: (coca-colacompany, our-2020-environment-goals-infographic 2019)
Innovation is the key to organizational environmental stability, and which can be promoted
through a flexible work environment. This means that the stakeholders of the company are free
to keep up their viewpoint to the company and work according to their comfort. Moreover, the
initiatives taken by the company include major change management, for which the flexible work
environment could be helpful for the employees to resist change. The flexibility could be in
terms of process, system, a way of working, or work timings (Mio, Corazza and Scagnelli 2017)
For the modern organization, green human resource management has been implemented by the
companies, which include integration of ecological objective in human resource management
activities. Job design is one of those activities, other than this, recruitment, employment
planning, employee development, and motivation, and evaluating functions are considered under
it. This includes supporting ort training the workforce to appreciate, understand, and practice
initiatives related to ecology (Bombiak 2018).
Implementation of organizational policies
As already discussed, the environmental stability initiatives take by the organization has to be
integrated with all the functions in the organization, this includes providing the organization with
organizational policies including the ecological issues and concern. This could be better
understood while analyzing the coca cola organizational policies influencing environmental
stability (coca-colacompany, 2016 Sustainability Report: Water Stewardship Infographic 2017).
These include:
 Climate change policy – for conducting all the business activities in a sustainable way, it
strives to limit the influence of its activities on climate change. In bottling plant, then the

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 9
use of energy is mostly operated from coca cola Hellenic through direct greenhouse gas
emission (Sorving 2018). Moreover, the indirect emission includes the predations from
raw material like packaging and ingredients and equipment of cold drink. The policy
includes the reduction of energy consumed in the operations, setting the targets to
minimize the supply chain’s carbon emissions, implementation of renewable energy
technologies as an alternative (Seatter and Lozano 2015). For instance, combines solar
panels, power plants, and combined heat were used for additional sustainable energy for
all the facilities of coca cola Hellenic. Moreover, the policy included the adaption of
greenhouse gas protocol, which includes a report of targets, gas emissions, results, and
tasks openly (coca-colahellenic 2019).
 Environmental policy – the company believes in the responsibility of oneself related to
the environment and found all the employees of the company accountable for the
performance of the environment. The environmental policy of the company includes
achieving stable improvement in reaching environmental standards and performing to
minimize the negative effect on the global and local environment, as and when the
business of the company grows (Whelan and Fink 2016). For the accomplishment of this,
the policy created to reach the targets, this includes:
 Conduct of operations of the company while abiding by applicable regulations and laws
and apply them into internal environment standards (coca-colacompany, together-we-
can-change-our-future 2019)
 Including the environmental objectives and strategies in the process of business planning
to ensure if the environmental impact management remains the operation’s integral part

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 10
 Identification of environmental goals, auditing and monitoring processes for assessing the
performance against external and internal environmental standards (coca-colacompany,
2017-water 2019)
 Identification and implementation of the technique to enhance efficiency through the use
of company’s resources and materials, minimize the emission, prevent pollution, and
recycle waste.
 Commitment to treat wastewater and save water through watersheds (coca-cola.co.uk,
Sustainable Packaging and Recycling 2017)
 Commitment to protecting the environment by reducing the use of energy and coolant
emissions (coca-colacompany.com 2019)
 Promoting sustainable packaging in the industry by recycling containers, light weighing,
and use of recycled material for further use (coca-colahellenic, coca-cola-hbc-
environmental-policy 2019)
Recommendations
1. Sustainability coordinator job position – one of the way to promote the environment
stability in the organization, it is important for the management to recruit a suitable
coordinator, which will be held responsible for the managing the ecological issues and its
initiative in the organization, and coordinate the same in all the departments of the
organization (peoriamagazines 2018)
2. Various conservation initiative – the initiatives related to the conservation is very
necessary to start. This is something, which every individual in personal life must also
follow, that is to conserve the nonrenewable resources to the maximum to make them
sustain for the next generations. The company must conserve the water, fuel etc. that are

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 11
the major issues in case of scarcity in the external environment. Especially, if the
organization is working in the area where these issues are some of the major ones
(Munson 2013)
3. Increase in communication efforts – the promotion of eth environmental sustainability
can only be done if the communication efforts are increased in the organization and in
society as a whole. This is to make people aware and reminder for sustainability, for
which the company can conduct the campaigns, and posters to promote more effectively.
The company must include this is their CSR activities, as they are socially responsible for
this, which can be done through improvement in communication efforts (Okpara 2017).
4. Create public commitment – it is recommended for the organization to create public
awareness, and increase the commitment level in the public, as the campaigns and
initiative by the company would be of no use if the public were not liable or committed to
helping the organization achieve that (Ottman 2017)
For instance, coca cola initiative of recycling is only possible if the public is proving the
bottles back, or disposing off the bottles at the right place, so that the company can get
the used bottles to recycle (Mio, Corazza and Scagnelli 2017).
5. Promotion of integration of sustainable policies and principles – the company must
promote all other companies in the industry or dealing with the similar business, let us
say partners involved in the supply chain to integrate the environmental sustainability to
their policies and principles of the organization. This is done, as the result would be
positive the help of all the companies, instead of just one to work upon for the
sustainability (Wood and Logsdon 2015)

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 12
Conclusion
From the report, it can be concluded that the environment plays a vital role in the lives of
individual and organization. Since the organization is using the natural and non-renewable
resources from the environment, it is their responsibility to help the environment safe the natural
resources for future and coming generations in long term. This is said to be an environmentally
stable company, which is conducting business in favor of saving the environment in long run.
Moreover, it was observed that due to law application, or self-responsibility, the organizations
are feeling more responsible towards the environmental sustainability, and has affected the
organizational behavior to large extent.
The coca cola is one of the largest beverage company working globally and found to be an
environmental stable company with policies related to the environment and carbon emission.
This lead to the change management in the company, which affect the organizational behavior,
and increase the need for job design through approaches applicability and flexible working
environment.

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND BEHAVIOR 13
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