Business, Society & Planet

This reflective essay discusses the concepts of sustainable business including the issues, approaches and challenges. It explores the six capitals and phases of sustainability. The essay also highlights the importance of organisational culture in achieving sustainability.

Running head: BUSINESS, SOCIETY & PLANET
Business, Society & Planet
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

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Sustainability has been an important objective of the businesses in the past decade and
the core principle of the organisations is to achieve the sustainability in the long run of the
business. In this reflective essay, the concepts of sustainable business including the issues,
approaches and challenges have been discussed. Sustainable business can be defined as the
organisation that creates a minimum negative impact on the local or global environment and the
sustainable businesses are progressive in human rights and environmental aspects.
John Elkington during the time of the 1990s created a new framework to monitor the
performance of the organisation regarding sustainability in America. This measure went beyond
the traditional framework of the organisation and it just did not measure the profit, shareholders'
values and return on investment; it also included the social and environmental dimensions. As
stated by Elkington (2013), the triple bottom line is the idea that fetches to broaden the aim on
the financial bottom line by the organisations to include the environmental and social
responsibilities. Therefore, the triple bottom line of the organisation measures the economic
value, social responsibility and environmental impact of the organisations. I did not have an idea
about triple bottom line; I only knew the organisation's bottom line was only the income
statement or the net income. Today's organisations do not run only for financial profit but the
betterment of people's lives and to help the environment. The responsibilities of the organisations
encompass not only to profit; but also people and planet to make them sustainable (Caroll &
Buchholtz, 2014).
I was reading the framework published in the International Reporting Council, where the
article focused on the capital needs of the organisations. Financial capital is about understanding
the implication of the regulatory changes that provide the traditional strengths of finance
(Williard, 2012). Manufactured capital is about the decision-making of the financial analysis as

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the manufactured capital can lead to the success of the organisation. I believe that manufactured
assets are the physical distribution of the services, networks and distribution networks. These
goods and services should be delivered to the customers on time to utilise the manufactured
capital. Intellectual capitals are the intangible assets like patents, trademarks and brand equity of
the organisation (De Visscher, 2016). Human capital is the human resources that do the
intellectual work of the organisation along with the technologies. I personally think that the
organisations spend on training, on-boarding and reduce the employee turnover so that the
human capital can be used to increase the efficiency of the intellectual capital. In addition, social
and relational capitals are the social networking media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter that
help the organisation to make relations with the customers and the external stakeholders. Finally,
natural capital of the organisation is the raw materials that are used by the organisation like oil
and gas, mining and other assets of the organisations. According to me, the organisations need to
use these six capitals in order to improve the community and to go towards sustainability.
According to Dunphy, Griffiths & Benn (2006), there are six phases in the sustainability.
The first phase is about rejection and it involves with the attitude on the part of the managers that
the resources of the organisation like community, employees and environment all should be used
for the immediate economic gain of the organisations. The second phase is about non-
responsiveness and it comes from the lack of awareness of the organisation rather than to the
active opposition of the corporate ethics (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014). In this phase, the
organisations can ignore the sustainability and continue the business as usual form. In addition,
compliance mainly focuses on the reducing the risks for failing to achieve the minimum
standards of the producer or the employer. The organisations might change it to the growing
legal requirements. In this stage, I think, the organisation's strategies might relate to the human

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sustainability that aims to legal compliance. The organisation can expect the employees' loyalty
in terms of compliance. Moreover, efficiency reflects an increasing awareness of the managers
and the organisations regarding the corporate social responsibilities gained through the
proactively maintaining the sustainability practices. In this stage, the organisation can try to
reduce the costs of the operational efficiency. The next phase is the strategic proactivity and it
develops when the sustainable practices can seize the opportunities. An example of the strategic
proactive can be the positioning of an organisation as the leader. In this regard, I can take the
name of BP (British Petroleum) as they named it as a global leader in sustainability while they
are doing the business in non-renewable resource-based products. Therefore, BP has adopted the
strategic approach of sustainable practices of the business. Lastly, sustaining corporation concept
reflects the internationalisation of the sustainability and the organisations can promote the
developing the society that would support the planet as well as the people. As stated by (Beattie
& Smith, 2013), the organisations can contribute the democratic and equitable social practices.
Fuji Xerox is a joint venture company and it moved from selling to leasing the office
equipment. This organisation takes the used goods; they process their component and rebuild the
machines. Therefore, most of the parts are recycled and zero waste. This feature of the business
provides us with the example of doing the business that rebuilds the products with enhanced
quality and reliability. In addition, I can provide another example of the eco-friendly supply
chain of Ford Motor Company that has been using the fewer vehicles that pollute the atmosphere
and it has been trying to make vehicles those would take less non-renewable fuels.
Therefore, the companies are trying to be more focused on the environment to provide
less carbon footprint. Movement of the organisations towards sustainability mainly depends on
the organisational culture to gain the sustainability. My future aim is to a leader of a

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multinational organisation, I would try to bring the major transformation of organisation
assumption and practices related to the sustainability. I believe science and technologies both are
vital for the successful planning of the business and the organisation can implement the
technologies that will depend mostly on people.

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Reference List
Beattie, V., & Smith, S. J. (2013). Value creation and business models: refocusing the
intellectual capital debate. The British Accounting Review, 45(4), 243-254.
Benn, S., Edwards, M., & Williams, T. (2014). Organizational change for corporate
sustainability. Abingdon: Routledge.
Carroll, A. & Buchholtz, A., (2014). Business and Society: Ethics, sustainability, and
stakeholder management. London: Nelson Education.
De Visscher, F. M. (2016). Financing Transitions: Managing capital and liquidity in the family
business. Berlin: Springer.
Dunphy, D., Benn, S. & Griffiths, A. (2006). Enabling change for corporate sustainability: An
integrated perspective. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 13(3), 156-
165.
Elkington, J. (2013). Enter the triple bottom line. In The triple bottom line (pp. 23-38).
Abingdon: Routledge.
Willard, B. (2012). The new sustainability advantage: seven business case benefits of a triple
bottom line. London: New Society Publishers.