Business Studies: Sustainability and Competitive Advantage Report

This report examines the concept of sustainability and its impact on the long-term competitive advantage of organizations, focusing on Unilever as a case study. It discusses how sustainability, involving ethical practices and resource protection, is crucial for businesses. The report highlights the advantages of sustainability, such as attracting new customers, tax benefits, improved workforce morale, and positive social impact. Additionally, it identifies essential attributes and capabilities for success in a complex and changing business environment, including a strong vision, passionate leadership, adaptability, and diversity. The report concludes that sustainability is vital for long-term organizational success and that adaptability and strategic foresight are necessary for navigating environmental challenges. Desklib offers this document as part of its collection of study resources.

Business studies

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
Concept of sustainability and their impact on long term competitive advantage of the
organisation..................................................................................................................................1
Attributes and capabilities which are necessary for success of business in complex and
changing environment .................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Sustainability is related to concept under which the present development and the
practises are performed in such a way to protect the natural resources for the future.
Sustainability is one of the important and complex aspect of business which enables all the
business to use only those business practises which are ethical and does not harm the future
needs of the resources. Sustainability plays important role for the long term competitive
advantage of the organisation which is discussed in this report. The example which is taken here
is Unilever which one of the important and valuable company of the world. This report also
discussed various attributes and capabilities which are necessary for the organisation to achieve
success in this complex and changing environment.
MAIN BODY
Concept of sustainability and their impact on long term competitive advantage of the
organisation
The concept of sustainability is one of the attractive trend of the market which is
followed by many organisation of the world. Under this concept, the management of the
organisation require to use only those approach or the strategies in the organisation which
promotes ethics and protection of the natural material (Aguilera and Grøgaard, 2019). It is
analyse from the market that the level of natural resources are on the edge of depletion due to the
malpractice and ineffective allocation by the business organisation. The government of the
respected states has developed number of rules and regulations to be followed by the
organisation so that it becomes positive for the management to deal with the situation in effective
manner. All these rules and regulations are developed only for the protection of environment
from different negative factors.
The impact of unassailability are negative on competitive advantage of the organisation
which helps the management to operate their business in effective and valuable manner. Unilever
is one of biggest organisation of the world which has followed the environmental approach under
which all the strategies of the company promotes natural environment. The management of the
company develop effective environment programme in their organisation under which the
considerable amount from the sale of some products are used for the social purpose by the
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company. There are many advantages are present which the company enjoys in long term if the
concept of sustainability can be developed in the organisation and the brief discussion related to
the same are given below:
 One of the important advantage of sustainability which the management of the
organisation enjoys by applying the concept of sustainability is that it helps the
organisation to attract new customers in the market (Aguzzoli, Gardner and Newburry,
2021.).
 There are number of tax benefits schemes are developed by the government which is
provided to those organisations which follows the concept of sustainability and work for
the betterment of the future.
 The morale and the confidence of the workforce are increased by the huge number when
the management of the organisation develop ethics in their workplace as it promotes
employees rights and duties.
 The social impact of the organisation becomes positive when the management of the
organisation uses effective approach in their business.
Attributes and capabilities which are necessary for success of business in complex and changing
environment
Problems and the complexities are the part of the organisation and their business which
negatively impacts on the business of the organisation. These complexities and the problems are
developed due to the changes takes place in the business environment. There are number of
external factors are present in the market which can impact the organisation and COVID
pandemic is one of the biggest blunder which ruin the overall structure of the organisation. It is
important for the organisation to have different types of attributes and capabilities if they want to
overcome from these type of problems and the brief discussion related to the same are given
below:
Strong vision :- The vision of the organisation should be strong as the scope of their
thinking should be far. It is important for the management of the organisation to develop those
vision for the organisation which promotes foresightedness. It helps the organisation to see the
future opportunities and threats so that the counter strategies can be developed in the
organisation (Chapman, M., 2020).
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Passionate leaders :- It is important for the business to deal with the changing
environment to have passionate and effective leaders which helps the company to develop
passionate workforce towards the goals and objectives of the organisation.
Adaptability :- It is one of the most important and valuable feature which should be
present in the personality of managers of the organisation if they want to overcome the
environmental changes. The skills of adaptability helps the managers to mould their behaviour
according to the situation which helps them to overcome from the situation.
Diversity :- Every culture, every nationality, every single person sees the world in a
different way. Similarly, every culture, nationality, and person has different knowledge,
perspectives, and points of view (Guercini, S. and Milanesi, M., 2020). When all of these
different views are shared together, miracles can happen.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from this report that sustainability plays plays important role for the organisation
to achieve long term sustainability in the organisation. It enables the organisation to use only
those practises in their businesses which helps to maintain the number of sources which helps to
maintain ethics in the business. This report concluded number of advantages which the
organisation faces while using sustainability concept in their business. The second part of this
report concludes essentiality of various abilities attributes for the management. Diversity
Adaptability Passionate leaders Strong vision are the important attributes which should be
present in the management to overcome from the complexities which the management of the
organisation can be faced at the time of changing environment.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Aguilera, R.V. and Grøgaard, B., 2019. The dubious role of institutions in international business:
A road forward. Journal of International Business Studies, 50(1), pp.20-35.
Aguzzoli, R., Gardner, E. and Newburry, W., 2021. Letter from the editors: Special forum on"
research methods in international business". AIB Insights, 21(2), pp.1-4.
Chapman, M., 2020. Social anthropology and business studies: some considerations of method.
In Inside Organizations (pp. 19-33). Routledge.
Guercini, S. and Milanesi, M., 2020. Heuristics in international business: a systematic literature
review and directions for future research. Journal of International Management, 26(4),
p.100782.
Nicolescu, L. and Nicolescu, C., 2019. Using PLS-SEM to build an employability confidence
model for higher education recipients in the field of business studies. Kybernetes.
Olalla, C.B. and Merino, A., 2019. Competences for sustainability in undergraduate business
studies: A content analysis of value-based course syllabi in Spanish universities. The
International Journal of Management Education, 17(2), pp.239-253.
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