Report on Sustainable Business Strategies and CSR Approaches

This report provides an analysis of sustainable business strategies and management, focusing on the approaches used by companies like TUI, IBM, and ALD Automotive. It examines how these organizations integrate environmental, social, and economic considerations into their business practices. The report details specific strategies such as recognizing strategic context, developing a vision for sustainability, creating action plans, setting timescales, and ensuring effective communication and reporting. Furthermore, it explores different approaches to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) employed by these companies, including environmentalism, cause-related marketing, and social marketing. The second part of the report reflects on the key skills developed through learning activities and business case analysis, emphasizing communication, problem-solving, and teamwork, highlighting their importance for future career growth.

Foundations of
business
communication

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
Sustainable approaches to business strategy and management..............................................1
Evidence of strategies used by businesses to operate in ethical and sustainable ways..........2
Different approaches to CSR used by various organisations.................................................5
PART 2............................................................................................................................................9
Key skills that were developed in the learning the units and analysing business case..........9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Business communication refers to conveying the ideas, vision, mission, objectives
and other aspects about the business to its stakeholders and listening to their
responses. Sustainable business activity refers to integration of the goals ideas, values
and morale of society with the organisational goals to create welfare of all. The report
will be divided in two parts and it will be discussing about three organisations, TUI, IBC
and ALD involved in automotive industry and leasing of vehicles. The first part of this
report will demonstrate about various sustainable approaches of business strategy and
management. Furthermore, it will demonstrate various sustainable approaches used by
these organisations to operate ethically. Along with this, the discussion about CSR
(corporate social responsibility) is also provided, which is used by these organisations to
operate their business ethically and sustainably. Moreover, the second part of the report
will describe the skills that were developed while learning the units and analysing the
business case. The skills such as communication, problem solving and working with
others will be explained in the end of this report.
PART 1
Sustainable approaches to business strategy and management
Sustainability is a concern of an organisation towards its, economy, society and
environment which combines their efforts to improve them. It integrates the society,
economy and environment into the aims and objectives of the organisation to enhance
the overall welfare of everyone. The organisation uses various approaches of
sustainable management to create long term values for the company, stakeholders and
the society as whole (Landrum and Ohsowski, 2018). Therefore, the strategies are
formulated to fulfil the needs of stakeholders, society and the organisation while also
reducing the impact on nature and environment. The companies like TUI, IBC and ALD
determines that their activities, business practices and functions are performed
effectively through a detailed understanding of the impacts that are caused on the
nature and environment. By this the organisations comply with the requirements and
demands of the environment and community. Also, the organisations ensure that they
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reduce their negative impacts on the environment and enhance the welfare of the
society (Isensee, and et. al., 2020).
Sustainable approaches to the business are mainly the tools, strategies and
methods that are used by a business to transform their unsustainable business into
sustainable one. The strategies establish a route map for the organisations to convert
their businesses sustainable and continue its sustainability for longer duration
(Schaltegger, Hörisch and Freeman, 2019). In order to work sustainably and ethically
the organization mainly uses strategy which is as follows:
 Recognizing the strategic context: This mainly includes the identification and
analysis of unsustainable practices that could affect the organization in the local
area. It mainly aimed towards identifying the key issues in the management
operations of the organization that lead to unsustainability of a business.
 Developing the vision for sustainability: It consists of framing a clear picture of
what the company wants to achieve in its long run with the environmental,
economic and social aspects. It shows what the business will gain from the
society and economy if it makes its activities sustainable.
 Action plan: It refers to a pathway or a sequence of activities that are needed to
achieve the vision of sustainability (Kaswan and Rathi, 2020). It mainly consists
of actions and plans that drive the organization to achieve its sustainability goals.
 Timescales: It tells about the relevant time for which the trends identified will
work with our organization’s sustainability. Timescales relevant to the taste and
preference identified for the physical or tangible material environment and social
issues.
 Communication and reporting: The idea for sustainability must be clear,
meaningful and consistent that could provide a complete sense for the growth of
business. Then it must be demonstrated and made transparent in front of the
company's stakeholders, internally as well as externally.
Evidence of strategies used by businesses to operate in ethical and sustainable ways
Sustainability Strategy of TUI
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TUI has been credited as the organization with a highly sustainable approach to
business. TUI group is the digit travel and tourism company which was established in
the year 1923 and is headquartered at Berlin, Germany. The company has used the
strategy for making its business sustainable which is as follows:
Figure 1: TUI Group Sustainability Strategy 2015-2020
 Recognizing the strategic problem: The industry has been recognized as a
critical contributor in global carbon emissions which is a critical challenge for the
organization (Sustainability Strategy of TUI, 2020).
 Developing the vision: TUI has developed its better holidays and better world
response for enhancing the social economic and environmental sustainability by
the organization.
 Step lightly: The Company has focused on reducing the environmental impacts
of their activities by reducing carbon intensity of their operations by 10% or
more.
 Make a difference: TUI has created positive changes for the people and
communities exerting their influence over the sustainability impacts by engaging
customers and partners of business including value chains and suppliers.
 Lead the way: TUI has focused on becoming the forefront of innovation and
sustainable business and inspires other companies to become sustainable in
their operations.
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Sustainability Strategy of IBM
Another company that has adopted sustainable business practices in its
operations is International Business Machines Corporation, IBM. International business
machines or IBM is a multinational machine corporation that is headquartered in
Armonk, New York, which was established in the year 1911. A company embraces
sustainability to drive new value for their businesses with the help of the compliance,
optimization and transform strategy (Sharma, 2019).
 Comply: IBM focuses on complying with the requirements of the society,
economy and environment in order to create best sustainable practices for the
business (IBM Sustainability solutions, 2020).
 Optimize: Optimization is a process of reducing the wastage and achieving the
desired results with a given amount of resources. The company focuses on
reducing its dependency on nature or environment to extract resources, and tries
to utilize its operational efficiency to create sustainable business activities.
 Transform: The company uses resilience such as business uses ready for
disruption and opportunity to make changes in the organization and enable
sustainability in business.
IBM focuses on enhancing sustainable development and preparing for uncertainty to
develop such solutions that could enhance its sustainability towards socio-economic
and environmental conditions. Also the business responds with advanced analytics on
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its assets, employees and customers to ensure business continuity (Cheung, Tan and
Wang, 2020)
Sustainability Strategy of ALD
ALD automotive is among the organizations that had practiced sustainability in its
business. ALD Automotive is a French fleet managing and operational car leasing
company subsidiary of Societe Generale investment bank that was established in the
1960s and is headquartered at La Defence, France. The company has a simpler idea
for developing its business in a sustainable way. The company focuses on delivering the
transformation that it started 5 years ago to seize the opportunity of future growth for its
company.
ALD aims to become a fully integrated system level mobile provider and a global
leader in its industry. The company has used the strategy of move 2025 ambition for
translating into key drivers for sustainable growth. The company explains the strategy of
sustainability as a Move for customers, move for growth, move for good and move for
performance (Haski-Leventhal, 2018). It focuses on innovation for robust business
development and sustainable performance of the business.
Different approaches to CSR used by various organisations
Corporate social responsibility or CSR refers to a comprehensive idea can be
used by a company to fulfil their responsibility towards the society and community. It
consists of precise ideas, strategies, programmes, approaches and evaluation methods
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that are used by the company to understand its effectiveness on socio-economic areas.
Most of the companies use various approaches to build CSR programmes and few of
these companies also share their ideas publically.
CSR strategy of TUI involves Sustainability and Responsibility strategy which
is derived from the concept of environmentalism. It refers to the ability of an organization
to carry down its activities without compromising the health of the environment to
maintain better ecological conditions in future. TUI focuses on reducing its impacts on
the environment and helps the people to get benefit from travelling without causing any
harm to the environment. The company is pioneering a sustainable tourism sector by
dropping their emotions and using sustainable strategies for their development. The
company also utilizes social entrepreneurship and social marketing strategy by
involving the participation of political bodies to give a dialogue and campaign regarding
its business for the interest of its customers present across the world. TUI constantly
publishes their positions, activities, information and policy news in this category for
developing a positive impact of their business on society.
IBM focuses on cause related marketing strategy by stating that they are doing a
business in an unpredictable world. The company e improves their levels of resilience
and agility for the growth of sustainable business and improving the health of the
environment. The company tries to focus on making its business activities sustainable
for preserving the planet for their future generation (Kim and Ki, 2020). The company
addresses its five key areas of development for sustainable business including climate
energy and emissions management, supply chain, risk management, electrification,
infrastructure and operations. IBM tries to create better solutions for developing
infrastructure with the help of long lasting materials to extend the lifetime and use of
products to downsize their overall emissions and waste generated. IBM focuses on
reducing wastage and lowering the cost of supply chain visibility to minimize its effects
on the environment.
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ALD automotive uses social marketing to persuade social goals often with the
governments and nonprofit organizations to enhance the sustainability of its business.
The company uses social marketing to convince the citizens to drive more safely, have
better lifestyles and avoid misconduct to enhance better values and morale among the
people. The company mainly focuses on the society and its responsibility towards their
betterment and wellness. It uses prize ideas, strategies, programs and beliefs of people
to develop their habits and practices for creating a better future for upcoming
generations.
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PART 2
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PART 2
Key skills that were developed in the learning the units and analysing business case
From the learning activity and the business analysis I developed many skills such
as the communication skills, social skills, creativity, problem solving etc. From the
activities of the week six the following skills and abilities were developed by me, that
could help me in my career growth in the future. The learning activities in the early part
of the academic career are new but it is very important to develop various skills and
abilities among the students (Rebele and Pierre, 2019). With the academic activities
every student would be able to become effective and efficient in their academics as well
as future career. In order to grow effectively and efficiently it is important that the
students possess certain learning abilities. The career growth mainly depends upon
these learning skills that are developed by me in the initial academic duration which are
given below:
Communication Skills
Academic success depends on the solid communication skills, starting with the
clear ability to exchange information with others in a meaningful way. I learned and
developed oral and written communication skills with the help of the learning activities.
We were given the opportunity to interact with each other in the classroom group
discussion activity where I understood how to communicate effectively with the team
members and other classmates that could help me to enhance my overall ability to
communicate effectively to the people. I developed written communication skills with the
help of the presentation activity where the groups were formed to develop PowerPoint
presentation on the latest technological advancements in business world. In the activity I
and my team members were assigned to create a PowerPoint that could demonstrate
and communicate the topic effectively to every student in the classrooms, which helped
me to develop my oral and written communication skills. Also the report writing activity
in the classroom also helped to demonstrate and create effectiveness of my written
communication skills (Mädamürk, Kikas and Palu, 2018).
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Numeracy skills
It is the second skill that was developed by me during the learning activities of the
academics. Numeracy can be defined as the ability to identify and utilise numerical or
mathematical concepts in the areas of my academics. It mainly involves the use of
statistical data and analytical data such as estimates, measurements, additions,
subtractions, numerical problems etc. During the activities such as preparation for
seminars presentations I needed to use the statistical and numeric data on consistent
basis due to which I developed the numeracy skills. This skill will be helpful for dealing
with the numeric data and analytical problems could be solved very easily (Mesallam,
Yousef and Almasaad, 2019).
ITC skills
These skills were developed by me during the academic course work which will
enhance the critical thinking ability and logical reasoning. I understood that this skill
would be helpful to perform typical tasks, gain oversights, provide better reasoning,
solve problems and navigate problems in simpler ways. In the Microsoft office
programme certain pictures were provided to identify the task of the given assessment
sheet and justify our statements by discussing with others. Identification of the task verb
was done to demonstrate the reason such as comparison of how the two things are
similar and different (Sarkar and et. al., 2020). Also in the activity we needed to utilise
the given thinking tools to organize the research data and the thoughts to maintain
clarity. In the activity I also learnt that the use of appropriate language is important that
could help to compare the data of given assessment sheet with the others. It helped to
understand that there are many ways in which logical reasoning for a given data can be
drawn that makes it similar or different form others.
Problem solving skills
During the academic activities I also learnt about the problem solving ability and
enhanced my own problem solving skills. Problem solving is an important activity that is
needed to be performed by everyone because everyone faces problematic situations
throughout their life and with the help of problem solving skills these problems can be
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eliminated or solved easily. I learned this skill from the activities of information gathering
for the assignment, where I faced the problem of clashes within the team members
(Viberg, Mavroudi and Ma, 2020). Therefore, I had to seek for solutions to get them
together for the assignment, so I started thinking and brought up the solution for the
team to work together. I started to evaluate and listen to the problems and ideas of each
team members so that their ideas could be combined and put under a single frame to
bring clarity. With the activity I learnt about how the problems can be solved and how
the woks and ides of individual can be used for the benefit of the whole team. D u b u a
b r u w b
Working with others
The maximum activities in the academic learning sessions were conducted in
groups or teams such as the presentation, game design, etc. due to which I learned
about the skill to work with others. This skill is important to collaborate and align the
efforts of all the members together to achieve a given task or objectives. In the starting
of the session we were informed that all the students needs to take part in individual and
group learning activities in order to develop various skills. Therefore, it was clear that
the group activities will become complacent for the overall academic phase. I already
prepared myself for the group activities but it was not easy to work in group. With the
initial group discussion activity within the academic learning programme I faced
challenges with collaborating with other members and it was same with everyone. I
started listening to everyone and interacted to develop better team relations to work
together. With better interactions among the team members the ability of everyone to
work with others enhanced due to which we were able to work better. Within another
group activity of PowerPoint presentation we worked effectively with everyone and all of
us worked together to have better results.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that sustainable business activity is
very important in order to integrate the goals, ideas, values and morale of society with
the organisation objectives to create higher profits and welfare of all. Moreover, this
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report had been celebrating the sustainability approaches of a business strategy and
Management such as developing vision for sustainability, time scales communication
and reporting etc. Furthermore, the report has been providing an evaluation of
strategies such as compliance optimization transformation etc. that are used by an
organisation to operate in ethical and sustainable ways. Along with this, it has been
elaborating about different approaches of corporate social responsibility such as
sustainability and responsibility strategy, cause related marketing etc.that are used by
an organisation to improve their sustainability practice. In the end, this report has been
demonstrating certain scales such as communication, analytical skills, ITC skills,
problem solving and team working that are developed in the learning activities of
academics.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cheung, Y. L., Tan, W. and Wang, W., 2020. Where do banks value corporate social
responsibility more? Evidence on the role of national culture. Journal of Banking
& Finance, 118. p.105810.
Haski-Leventhal, D., 2018. Strategic corporate social responsibility: Tools and theories
for responsible management. Sage.
IBM Sustainability solutions, 2020. [Online] Available through < https://www.ibm.com/in-
en/impact/sustainability?>
Isensee, C., and et. al., 2020. The relationship between organizational culture,
sustainability, and digitalization in SMEs: A systematic review. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 275. p.122944.
Kaswan, M. S. and Rathi, R., 2020. Green Lean Six Sigma for sustainable development:
Integration and framework. Environmental impact assessment review, 83.
p.106396.
Kim, M. and Kim, J., 2020. Corporate social responsibility, employee engagement, well-
being and the task performance of frontline employees. Management Decision.
Landrum, N. E. and Ohsowski, B., 2018. Identifying worldviews on corporate
sustainability: A content analysis of corporate sustainability reports. Business
Strategy and the Environment, 27(1). pp.128-151.
Schaltegger, S., Hörisch, J. and Freeman, R. E., 2019. Business cases for
sustainability: A stakeholder theory perspective. Organization &
Environment, 32(3). pp.191-212.’
Sharma, E., 2019. A review of corporate social responsibility in developed and
developing nations. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental
Management, 26(4). pp.712-720.
Sustainability Strategy of TUI, 2020. [Online] Available Through
https://www.tuigroup.com/damfiles/default/tuigroup-15/en/sustainability
Rebele, J. E. and Pierre, E. K. S., 2019. A commentary on learning objectives for
accounting education programs: The importance of soft skills and technical
knowledge. Journal of Accounting Education, 48. pp.71-79.
Mädamürk, K., Kikas, E. and Palu, A., 2018. Calculation and word problem-solving skill
profiles: Relationship to previous skills and interest. Educational
psychology, 38(10). pp.1239-1254.
Mesallam, T. A., Yousef, M. and Almasaad, A., 2019. Auditory and language skills
development after cochlear implantation in children with multiple
disabilities. European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology, 276(1). pp.49-55.
Viberg, O., Mavroudi, A. and Ma, Y., 2020, September. Supporting second language
learners’ development of affective self-regulated learning skills through the use
and design of mobile technology. In European Conference on Technology
Enhanced Learning (pp. 173-186). Springer, Cham.
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Sarkar, M. and et. al., 2020. Academics’ perspectives of the teaching and development
of generic employability skills in science curricula. Higher Education Research &
Development, 39(2). pp.346-361.
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