ENGT5219 Engineering Business Environment

University
Module name: Engineering Business Environment
Module code: ENGT5219
Title of the Assignment: Assignment A – Analysing a Sustainable
Business
Name

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Approaches to Sustainable Development 3
Approaches Applied in the Chosen Business 6
Comparison of Approaches 8
References 9
2

Introduction
Considering the present situation where the ecological wellbeing of Earth has been affected on
account of man’s indiscriminate economic activities, governments and legislations have become
focused on regulating environmental impacts of organizations. Therefore, organizations in order
to comply with the established legal frameworks and also to exercise their social responsibility
properly have to devise efficient approaches towards the development of sustainable business
practices that shall reduce their carbon footprints. In order to understand the practical nuances of
implementation of a suitable approach for sustainable development within an organizational
context, the case study of the British multinational confectionery company Cadbury shall be
taken up.
Approaches to Sustainable Development
1. The Triple Bottom Line: The triple bottom line approach looks for mainly the three
bottom line factors which are closely related to the business, that is the social bottom line,
environmental bottom line and financial/ economical bottom line. This approach helps in
determining the performance in order to deliver greater value from the business [3]. It is
suitable as a calculative tool as the three impacts of the business created on the external
environment is calculated in terms of money or some index. Perceiving the impacts,
remedial measures are taken in order to have a clean growth.
3

Figure 1: Triple Bottom line sustainability approach
(Source: learner)
2. The Five Capitals: The five capital approach consists of capital elements such as Natural
Capital, Human Capital, Social Capital, Manufactured capital and Financial Capital.
Natural Capital looks for flow of stock or energy that facilitates production, Human
Capital contains skills, health, knowledge and motivation which helps staffs do take up
any work. While, social capital identifies different bodies or concerns which unites the
human capital with the other phenomena. Manufactured capital is of fixed assets needed
for carrying out production mechanism while, financial capital consists of monetary
means which helps in carrying on with and paying off the price to the other factors of
production [4]. It is suitable as it helps in defining and relating each of means of
production with the production process. Businesses can easily understand what inputs
they have to put in correct form so that clean growth and reproduction can be ensured.
Figure 2: The five capitals
Source: [4]
3. Natural Capitalism: Natural capitalism is an emerging concept where the fundamental
category of capital, namely natural capital is attributed its proper value. It is constituted
by the use of environment friendly technologies that extract maximum productivity out of
natural capital in order to ensure that resources are not used wastefully [8]. Besides it also
relies on the adoption of biologically inspired production models where wastes can be
reintegrated with the ecosystem or can be used as a raw material for another industry.
4