Analyzing Sustainability: Business Challenges, Support, and Conduct

This report examines the ethical issue of sustainability within the business environment, focusing on challenges, impacts, and the role of codes of conduct. It highlights the positive and negative impacts of sustainability initiatives, such as economic growth versus the danger of greenwashing. The report emphasizes the importance of companies adopting low-carbon initiatives and investing in energy efficiency to preserve natural resources. It discusses how codes of conduct, based on the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic), guide organizations in limiting natural resource consumption and adopting green initiatives. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is identified as a key professional body providing financial support and policy guidelines to promote sustainable growth. The report concludes that while sustainability efforts can be costly and time-consuming, they ultimately benefit businesses through increased revenue and brand value, and communities through resource conservation and reduced crime. The report recommends organizations to use solar panels and recycle waste.

Sustainability

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Challenges and Impact of Sustainability issue in a business environment..................................3
Code of Conduct addressing sustainability issue.........................................................................4
Available support of business organizations to sustainability issues..........................................4
Evaluation of impact of business and professional body support................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6
Books and Journals......................................................................................................................6
Appendix..........................................................................................................................................8
CPD Plan.....................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Sustainability means the ability to maintain and supporting a process or resources over
the period of time on a continuous basis at the global, national and individual consumer level. In
the present time, sustainability is the major ethical issue that are affecting the world and many
lives. This issues includes climate change, waste production, natural resources use, air pollution
etc. Hence, the present report will be based on sustainability ethical issue and will also cover the
impact and challenges of this issue in business environment. This will also include the code of
conduct, available support and its impact over the sustainability issue.
Challenges and Impact of Sustainability issue in a business environment
Sustainability is the decision making process which require to take the positive actions
that does not have the negative consequences for either current as well as future generation. The
sustainability challenge put both positive and negative impact over the companies. For example,
If the companies include sustainability in their business model than this will leads to economic
growth enhancement, higher return on assets, equity, IRR which ultimately leads to superior
stock market performance (Adams and Larrinaga, 2019). On the other hand, the example of
negative impact of sustainability issue is danger of greenwashing. It means sometime companies
lies to the people that they follow all sustainable measures to produce products in order to gain
their support. This leads to misleading people into acting unsustainability (Hu, Chong and Wang,
2019). The companies are affecting this issue positively via taking low carbon initiative,
investment in energy efficiency in order to protect and preserve natural resources as well as
climate.
The measures and actions companies are adopting to eradicate the sustainability issues
are investment in sustainable solutions (Lee, Kwon and Ruan, 2019). For example, Ten-part
environment policy of Ford Motor company, zero net direct greenhouse gas emission policies of
Disney etc. The companies are adding to this issue via paying attention to environmental, social
and governance issues. For example, Tesla batteries is lithium-ion battery which are recoverable
and recyclable (Martinez, 2020).

Code of Conduct addressing sustainability issue
The code of conduct is known as the most common policy within an organization that
helps them to solve the sustainability issues. This code of conduct and sustainability policy is
based on Three Pillar of sustainability such as environmental, social and economic which also
referred as people, planet and profits (Lalwani and et.al., 2018). This code of conduct suggests
that every organization, individual or group should limit the consumption of natural resources so
that future generation will not face difficulty. This is a practice with the help of which users can
apply solutions to deal with the sustainability issues (Edwin, 2018). The code of conduct suggest
that companies should adopt the green initiatives, use of recyclable raw materials, limit the use
of electricity through solar panel, innovation and many more in order to achieve the
sustainability issue. This helps the company to improve their brand value and image among
society (Mejías and et.al., 2019). The code of conduct and sustainability policy also suggest the
three solutions to improve the situation of communities such as financing the new urban agenda,
promoting territorial development and enhancing urban resilience to the climate change as well
as disaster risks (Armstrong and Li, 2022). Lastly, this code also suggests the donations, charity,
educational support to poor children, providing employment opportunity etc. by the businesses in
order to improve the situation of individuals (Khan and et.al., 2022).
Available support of business organizations to sustainability issues
The professional body that is best suited to helping the companies so that they can deal with the
sustainability issue is The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
This indicate that the principle aim of the organizations is to build and promote the policies that
leads to sustainable growth and employment (Sun and et.al., 2022). For this, OCED has launched
Financing for sustainability development where finance will be provided to the organizations to
achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The OCED is one of the most suitable
organization for dealing with the sustainability issues because this is an international
organization that work for building better polices and providing finance for the same to the
organizations. It provides comparative analysis of member polices, develop best practices,
undertake peer reviews in order to remove key economic, social and environmental issues
(Ulucak and Ozcan, 2020). The support and advise given by OCED to organizations is financial

and policies guidelines. The guidelines help the organization to understand how they need to act
responsibly. They have advised the businesses to use Responsible business conduct (RBC)
standards and recommendations to minimize the adverse impact of their operations and supply
chain over the environment, society etc. (Beqiraj, Fedeli and Forte, 2018).
Evaluation of impact of business and professional body support
The positive impact of code of conduct and professional body support on sustainability
issues on the company is that the business able to get finance for sustainability or green initiative
polices implementation (Popescu, 2020). The positive impact of this from company perspective
is that it helps the businesses to earn more money and boost their sustainability. It also helps
them to reduce business cost, adopt more innovative strategies, gain new customers etc.
However, on the other hand, the negative impact of code of conduct and professional support is
that it takes too much time of company which distract the businesses from its main target. From
community perspective, this support will help in reducing crime, conserve valuable resources,
reduce waste and enhance the natural beauty of world (Ganda, 2019). On the other hand, the
negative impact of this support is that it is quite costly for community and company.
CONCLUSION
After summing up the above information on the sustainability issues, it has been
concluded that organizations are facing sustainability issue in the present world in order to
protect the society, environment and economic. In order to deal with the challenge of
sustainability issue, the companies all over the world are adopting many strategies and green
initiative. It is recommended to the organizations that they should use the solar panel to conserve
the electricity resources which is basically done by Tesla. Further, it is also recommendable to
the companies that they should also recycle waste and support environmental friendly practices.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adams, C. A. and Larrinaga, C., 2019. Progress: engaging with organisations in pursuit of
improved sustainability accounting and performance. Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal.
Armstrong, A. and Li, Y., 2022. Governance and sustainability in local government. Australasian
Accounting, Business and Finance Journal. 16(2). pp.12-31.
Beqiraj, E., Fedeli, S. and Forte, F., 2018. Public debt sustainability: An empirical study on
OECD countries. Journal of Macroeconomics. 58. pp.238-248.
Edwin, L., 2018. Responsible fishing and its strategic implementation for sustainability. ICAR-
Central Institute of Fisheries Technology.
Ganda, F., 2019. The environmental impacts of financial development in OECD countries: a
panel GMM approach. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 26(7). pp.6758-
6772.
Hu, X., Chong, H. Y. and Wang, X., 2019. Sustainability perceptions of off-site manufacturing
stakeholders in Australia. Journal of Cleaner Production. 227. pp.346-354.
Khan, I. and et.al., 2022. Linking energy transitions, energy consumption, and environmental
sustainability in OECD countries. Gondwana Research. 103. pp.445-457.
Lalwani, S. K. and et.al., 2018. Benchmarking self-declared social sustainability initiatives in
cocoa sourcing. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
Lee, P. T. W., Kwon, O. K. and Ruan, X., 2019. Sustainability challenges in maritime transport
and logistics industry and its way ahead. Sustainability. 11(5). p.1331.
Martinez, P., 2020. Space sustainability. Handbook of Space Security: Policies, Applications and
Programs, pp.319-340.

Mejías, A. M. and et.al., 2019. Traceability management systems and capacity building as new
approaches for improving sustainability in the fashion multi-tier supply
chain. International Journal of Production Economics. 217. pp.143-158.
Popescu, C. R. G., 2020. Sustainability Assessment: Does the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework
for BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project) Put an End to Disputes Over The
Recognition and Measurement of Intellectual Capital?. Sustainability. 12(23). p.10004.
Sun, Y. and et.al., 2022. Transition towards ecological sustainability through fiscal
decentralization, renewable energy and green investment in OECD countries. Renewable
Energy. 190. pp.385-395.
Ulucak, R. and Ozcan, B., 2020. Relationship between energy consumption and environmental
sustainability in OECD countries: the role of natural resources rents. Resources
Policy. 69. p.101803.

Appendix
CPD Plan
Area of Learning Reflection of learning Future implications Actions
Sustainability issues
(In this module, I
have learnt about the
various ethical issues
including
sustainability that is
faced by
organizations. This
helps me to
understand the
importance of
sustainability for the
protection of
environment and
enhancing business
performance and
brand values.)
During this module, I
have learnt about the
various ethical issues
that are facing by the
organization,
individual, society
and communities.
This ethical issues
includes
sustainability,
corporate
governance, CSR,
Human rights,
environment, child
labor, working
conditions etc.
During this module,
the learning of ethical
issues and its positive
as well as negative
impact over the
business,
communities and
individuals helps me
to decide what
sustainable practices I
need to adopt in
future when I will
start my own
business. My ultimate
goal is to start my
business and for this
firstly I need to gain
experience in the
business management
field. The learning
will help me to
present the different
idea to my employer
in future in order to
keep business
sustainable and
growing. Not only
The actions I will take in
order to implement this
learning in my present as
well as future life is as
follows:
 I will research
about the ethical
issue and various
solutions to address
this issues through
internet, one to one
session with uncle
who are employee
of any
organizations etc.
 I will Join the
online course in
order to develop
communication and
understanding
skills.
 I will implement
this learning in my
first employment in
the next 1 year after
my graduation.

that, this learning will
assist in the future
studies of mine such
as business
management etc. I
will able to sustain
my business after
understanding
sustainability issue
impact and benefits.
 I will also take
action such as self-
testing, space my
study time etc. to
implement this
learning.