Business, Society, and Planet: Reflective Journal on Sustainability

This reflective journal explores the concepts of sustainable business, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and their impact on society and the environment. The student reflects on the first two lectures, focusing on the triple bottom line (profit, planet, and people), the importance of considering various...Read More

RUNNING HEAD: BUSINESS, SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
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Business, Society and the Planet

Business, Society and Planet
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Reflective Journal: Sustainable Business
In the present dynamic environment businesses are growing and influencing on lives of
people and the society to the greater extent. Due to aggressive expansion and growth it is a
questionable situation whether resources will remain for future generations or not. In the
situation, “the role of business and corporate social responsibility is hopelessly imbalanced
equation” (Crane,2010). In the light of the above statement, I would like to present the concepts
that I learned in first two lectures of this coursework included understanding of social, ethical
and sustainable business practices. According to Varra & Timolo, 2017 sustainability is
established on three pillars that are the society, business and environment. From this I analyzed
that human messed up with so many things so badly this impacted on environment and the
society negatively. In order to equate and balance this mess sustainability and corporate social
responsibility plays an important role. As per my choice and experience, I found the concept of
triple bottom line relevant that is applicable to the real world. The three bottom lines are profit,
the planet and people. The business impacts directly on these three aspects (Alhaddi, 2015).
People+ Planet= Social responsibility + Environmental responsibility
From first two lectures, personally I found the “story of stuff” confronting as it directly
hit to my visual learning preferences. Further, I have since discovered the story of Broke,
change and even bottled water. All these concepts are brilliant for a visual mind to make it
understand the role that society and environment play. On the other side, these lectures forced
me to think about actions of individuals as their behavior mainly shaped by education, family
background, culture, experiences and relationships. Hence, I underlined the fact that not only
education shape or influence action of others or there is no single method that help in to reduce
the negative impact of actions of business in the world. Further, during coursework, I observed
that emphasized on the concept of “quality of life”. Earlier, the quality of life is the idea of
living good life but lectures shocked me and helped me to realize what actually quality of life is
all about.
Now refreshing, the lectures that focused on forms of capital in business as there are six
forms of capital that are used by businesses. If I see the practical scenario, people are ruining the

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environment for personal gain and to live a quality life. There is relation between money,
internal happiness and people that directly impacting on the environment and on the society
(Dauvergne, 2018). I learned that money is not only way to run business rather businesses need
to take care of other forma of capital that are human capital, natural capital, intellectual capital,
social capital and manufactured capital (Tamer, Dereli, & Sağlam, 2014). All these forms of
capital need to be used equally for sustainability and growth of the business. However,
sustainable organization focuses mainly on maintaining and enhancing their capital assets rather
than using them or depleting them.
In recent weeks, I had privilege to learn theories of business sustainability as they are
applicable on range of businesses whether small or large. All these approaches made me wonder
from where the concept of CSR start and end. As in real world, “small businesses grow into big
businesses, local businesses grow into regional businesses and regional businesses grow into
international businesses”. This leads to confusion that at what point the approaches of CSR
applied to business. All these confusions were cleared in lectures from which I get to know
about the six phases of sustainable businesses. According to Dunphy, Griffiths & Benn, 2003,
six phases of sustainable business are rejection, non-responsiveness, compliance, efficiency,
strategic proactivity and at last leads to sustainable business. Through all these phases I get to
know that any organization whether regional, national, small or large that follow these steps
become sustainable organization. The organizations at the beginning are non-sustainable and
after going through these phases they start to shift to sustainable procurement in terms of human
capital, money and natural capital. After that organization focus on remaining sustainable by
complying with legal practices and focusing on sustainable supply chain. This resultant to
efficiency and reactiveness and at last businesses become sustainable.
In a summary, from these lectures and coursework I learned many things such as
characteristics of sustainable organization, triple bottom line, and six forms of capital and phases
of sustainable organizations. I can say that lectures help me to understand the role that CSR
activities play in the business, society and the planet. Further, in order to connect this knowledge
with real world I researched businesses that are sustainable are BHP Billiton and Westpac in
Australia these are large organizations and well known for their sustainability practices and small
businesses such as Haigh Chocolates. It can be concluded that sustainability comes from small

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steps and from little steps big steps can be taken. Hence, the sustainability for the planet, the
society and for businesses starts from group efforts.
References
Alhaddi, H.,( 2015). Triple bottom line and sustainability: A literature review. Business and
Management Studies, 1(2), pp.6-10.
Crane, A. (2010). Business Ethics 3rd Edition.
Dauvergne, P. (2018). Will Big Business Destroy Our Planet?. John Wiley & Sons.
Tamer, İ., Dereli, B. & Sağlam, M. (2014). Unorthodox forms of capital in organizations:
positive psychological capital, intellectual capital and social capital. Procedia-Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 152, pp.963-972.
Varra, L. & Timolo, M., (2017). Sustainable Leadership Practices According to International
Standards of Corporate Social Responsibility. Impresa Progetto, 3, pp.1-24.