Organisational Sustainability and its Impact on Competitive Advantage

This essay delves into the concept of organizational sustainability, emphasizing its role in balancing present needs with future resource availability. It examines the impact of climate change, ecosystem degradation, and demographic factors like child labor on businesses, highlighting both positive and negative consequences. The essay further explores how sustainable practices, such as cost reduction and waste management, can lead to long-term competitive advantages through enhanced revenue, customer trust, and brand image. Recommendations are provided for businesses to navigate challenging environments, including avoiding child labor, meeting the needs of a growing population, responsible natural resource use, and adopting eco-friendly technologies. Ultimately, the essay concludes that sustainability is crucial for organizational success, enabling companies to build trust, enhance their brand, and achieve a lasting competitive edge.

Discussion on
Organisational
sustainability and Its
impact on competitive
advantages

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Task A..............................................................................................................................................1
Task B..............................................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Sustainability is the concept where companies mainly focus to use their natural resources
in such a way which will help to meet the needs and wants of their current generation without
compromising the requirements of future generation (Scoones and et. al., 2020). There are
various kinds of activities which can be followed by companies to maintain their sustainability
and CSR. CSR activities are not only related to environmental benefit but it also consist of
providing benefit to general people like avoiding child labour and many others. In context of an
organisation, the sustainability will help them to gain good brand image and effective
organisational growth by gaining the trust of customers. The following essay covers the
perception of sustainability which covers description of climate change, eco-friendly,
demographics and the impact of sustainability on organisational long term competitive
advantage. It also covers fundamental actions that can be taken for a business to success through
a difficult and changing environment.
MAIN BODY
Task A
Climate change refers to that situation where the weather become extremely hot, cold,
more diseases which harm the health of common people and economic cause. There are various
kinds of reasons for climate change like using fossil fuels unnecessarily (O’Neill and et. al.,
2020). Few other causes of climate change are global warming, wildfires, heat waves, floods and
many others. All these causes have negative impact upon a business. For example, due to flood,
the customers mainly spend their savings to purchase necessary ingredients and they will not
spend much to purchase products and services. Due to flood, earthquakes and many other natural
disaster the economy of a country gets decline and declines economy is not good for any
company to get survive. Global warming is the condition where earth's temperature get
increases due to various reasons and this happen for longer period of time (Alfonso, Gesto and
Sadoul, 2021). Due to global warming which means excess heat on earth, the labours who are
working at factories will get health diseases which further affect productivity of a company.
Human activities are considered as main cause of climate change. Increasing in carbon emissions
which is caused by petrol vehicles, burning plastics, cutting down trees for making buildings and
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many others cause huge damage to environment. Due to climate change the raw material's
quality get impacted and companies are unable to produce high quality of goods. For example,
due to excess heat the quality of coffee beans get lower and the company will sell low quality of
coffee powder to their customers which may cause customer dissatisfaction. This will harm the
brand image of a company. Working conditions get harmed due to climate change.
Ecosystem is geographical area which covers humans, animals, plants, landscape and
weather work together to form a good place for living (Bratman and et. al., 2019). Ecosystem
consist of both biotic (living things) as well as non-biotic (non-living things). Diminution of
land is the situation where natural environment get diminishing due to infrastructure and making
buildings for human livings (Maxama, 2021).. This will impact both positive and negative for a
business. It impact positive because it will provide place for companies to establish their offices
and factories for their operational activities. On the other hand, it will impact negative because it
will reduce natural resources for companies. The land for farming is getting reduced and this will
impact the company as their main raw material arrives from farming or forest woods. Excess use
of water is also one of the main factor for damaging ecosystem. Water is used in excess manner
and even it get wasted for no use (de Villa and et. al., 2022). Due to excess use of water the
ecosystem cycle get impacted and it further affect the weather. Bad weather will impact the
business upon their productivity, upon the health of their workers and many others. Misuse of
natural resources are also the reason for damaging ecosystem. Here, current generation are
using natural resources without proper planning and due to this the future generation have to face
issues. Natural resources are the key raw material for most of the companies and in case these
natural resources are used in excess manner then after few years the companies have to face lack
of raw material for their production.
Demographics consist of characteristics of selected population. In context of Tesco
which is a popular retailing company in UK, they mainly focus on the population of their country
and tries to target as much as customers as possible. The basic needs of growing population is to
gain clean air, healthy food, clean water and comfortable space to live. The companies can fulfil
these needs effectively to meet the needs of their growing population. This will impact the
company in positive ways because they have better opportunity to enhance the quality of their
products. Child labour is the situation where companies exploit children and force them to work
for them at very low wages (Mancini and et. al., 2021). There are various countries which are
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involved in child labour like Somalia, North Korea, Eritrea, South Sudan and many others
(Nazalya and Larsson, 2020). There are various root causes which increases child labour and
these causes are poverty, lack of access to quality education, limited understanding of child
labour, mass migration and many others. This will harm the community and degrade their
motivation and standard of living because poor families send their children for work instead of
schooling (Churchill and et. al., 2021). Hence, most of the companies make their policies
effective to avoid child labour and they hire employees above the age group of 18. most of the
countries sees child labour as one of the biggest crime and they plan and implement laws to
avoid it. Child labour will not only ruin the brand image of a company but it also slower the
economical growth of a nation (Ezeugu and Isah, 2021). Extreme use of natural resources is also
one of the biggest harm for companies because it will let the future generation suffer from the
situation of lack of resources (Redmond and Nasir, 2020). There are various kinds of negative as
well as positive impacts of these demographic factors upon companies.
Various companies can gain long term competitive advantage while using sustainable
activities within their organisation. Sustainable activities like reduction of cost, waste
management and many others will help the company to spend less on their expenditure and save
more for their organisation which means the company can enhance their revenue. Increase in
revenue will help the company to invest high ion productive activities and retain their talented
employees and hire new employees for organisational growth and competitive advantage.
Secondly, the customers will trust more to those companies which have effective CSR activities
(Pratono and et. al., 2019). Therefore, sustainability and CSR activities will help the company to
gain more customers and maintain their customer base stronger.
Task B
There are various fundamental actions that can be taken for a business to success through
a difficult and changing environment. Few of the actions are using high quality of tools and
machines with proper maintenance so that they will not produce carbon emissions. In context of
delivering products, the companies are required to use electric vehicles. There are few of the
recommendations which are made for solving above discussed issues-
 To avoid the child labour, the companies are required to reframe their policies and strictly
avoid to hire children below a particular age group. Secondly, a supervisor should be
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hired by the companies who are ex-government employee so that he will supervise
strictly that whether the company is stick to the child labour policy or not.
 To meet the needs of growing population, the private companies and government
companies have to collaborate and work well to meet the needs of their growing
population. Hygienic factors is one of the most essential factor which need to consider for
fulfilling the needs and wants of over population. The quality of products should be
double checked by a specific team so that good quality of products will be offered to their
customers.
 Misuse of natural resources is the main issue of damaging ecosystem. Hence, the solution
of this issue is that the countries are required to limit their corporate sector to use their
natural resources. This means that the government should keep their eyes on companies
to analyse how much resources they are using for what purpose and in case they found
any company to misuse the natural resources then they must punish that company to
motivate other companies to use the natural resources for their benefit. This
recommendation will manage the ecosystem effectively.
 It is also recommended to various companies especially delivery companies to use
electric vehicles to deliver their products from one location to another. Secondly, the
tools and machines which are used at factories should be maintained effectively to avoid
carbon emissions productions within air.
 To provide good quality of food to everyone which is one of the basic requirement of
growing population, the companies are required to maintain their supply chain and
inventory management. The government is required to keep the storage of those essential
food products which has long life spam and which can be used for critical situations
within the country.
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CONCLUSION
From the above information it is concluded that sustainability is the concept of
maintaining the interest of both generation, present generation as well as future generation
regarding usage of natural resources. Changing climate consist of that situation where weather
gets extremely uncontrollable like over heated, too much cold, flood due to excess rain and many
others and this happens due to human activities of increasing carbon emissions and many others.
Ecosystem is the concept which include landscape, living things, non-living things and many
others surround an individual. Child labour is required to avoided by the companies because it
can ruin their brand image as well as slower the economic growth of their nation. The extreme
use of natural resources is also harmful because it will step forward to a situation for future
generation which is called lack of resources. The companies can gain effective long term
competitive advantage through their sustainable activities because these activities will help the
company to gain the trust of their customers.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Alfonso, S., Gesto, M. and Sadoul, B., 2021. Temperature increase and its effects on fish stress
physiology in the context of global warming. Journal of Fish Biology, 98(6), pp.1496-
1508.
Bratman, G.N. and et. al., 2019. Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service
perspective. Science advances, 5(7), p.eaax0903.
Churchill, S.A and et. al., 2021. Unconditional cash transfers, child labour and education: theory
and evidence. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 186, pp.437-457.
de Villa, B. and et. al., 2022. Water Deficit and Excess and the Main Physiological Disorders in
Agricultural Crops. Journal of Agricultural Science, 14(8).
Ezeugu, N.C. and Isah, A.D., 2021. African Population Growth and her Response to Urban
Development A need to Adopt Smart City Ideas in Nigeria as a Blue Print for Rapid
Growing Population. School of Environmental Technology International Conference.
Khan, S.Z., Yang, Q. and Waheed, A., 2019. Investment in intangible resources and capabilities
spurs sustainable competitive advantage and firm performance. Corporate Social
Responsibility and Environmental Management, 26(2), pp.285-295.
Mancini, L. and et. al., 2021. Assessing impacts of responsible sourcing initiatives for cobalt:
Insights from a case study. Resources Policy, 71, p.102015.
Maxama, A., 2021. A spatial assessment of riparian vegetation density and implications for
streambank erosion in relation to land tenure in the Mgwalana Catchment, Eastern Cape
Province, South Africa.
O’Neill, B.C. and et. al., 2020. Achievements and needs for the climate change scenario
framework. Nature climate change, 10(12), pp.1074-1084.
Pratono, A.H. and et. al., 2019. Achieving sustainable competitive advantage through green
entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation: The role of inter-organizational
learning. The Bottom Line.
Redmond, T. and Nasir, M.A., 2020. Role of natural resource abundance, international trade and
financial development in the economic development of selected countries. Resources
Policy, 66, p.101591.
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Scoones, I. and et. al., 2020. Transformations to sustainability: combining structural, systemic
and enabling approaches. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 42, pp.65-
75.
Online-
Nazalya S. and Larsson O., 2020. Child labour risks increase in 23 countries – forecast to worsen
[Online] available through:
<https://www.maplecroft.com/insights/analysis/child-labour-risks-increase-in-over-10-of-
countries/>
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