UPD's Sustainable Business Practices: Analysis & Recommendations

This report examines the sustainable business practices of Unos Property Development (UPD), a hypothetical construction company, focusing on key recommendations for enhancing its sustainability profile. It emphasizes the importance of integrating CSR strategies with business objectives, particularly in energy and water efficiency within projects like Perth Skies Development. The report suggests UPD adopt a cost leadership strategy while meeting stakeholder expectations, recommending the inclusion of internal and external stakeholders in sustainability planning, utilizing green energy sources, and implementing benchmarking to transfer best practices across projects. Ultimately, the report concludes that a long-term vision and integrated approach are essential for UPD to establish a strong sustainable culture, achieve cost savings, and improve its corporate social responsibility profile.

A Report on Sustainable Business
Practices of Unos Property
Development
Student Name:
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Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to discuss the sustainable business practices of
Unos Property Development. The organization is a hypothetical organization. This
report discusses the key recommendations for company to be sustainable in nature.
The report highlights that the key focus area for UPD are energy efficiency and water
management. The integrated approach and the support of different stakeholders
would help the company to have strong sustainable culture in place.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary............................................................................................................ 2
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 4
2. Findings & Discussion........................................................................................................4
2.1 Corporate growth strategy............................................................................................4
2.2 CSR Strategy................................................................................................................ 4
3. Recommendations..........................................................................................................5
3.1 Inclusion of different stakeholders.................................................................................6
3.2 use of green sources of energy.....................................................................................6
3.3 Use benchmarking to pass the benefits from one project to another.............................6
4. Conclusion...................................................................................................................... 6
References............................................................................................................................. 7
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1. Introduction
Unos Property Development (UPD) is a successful construction company in
Perth. The company operates in both commercial and residential segment for last 35
years. The management of UPD wants to improve its corporate social responsibility
profile and therefore, they want to position themselves as a sustainable business.
There is a lot of scope to bring sustainable business practices in construction
industry. One of the key projects of the company is Perth Skies Development that
was started with the aim to provide energy efficient homes to people. The company
has a meeting with the council where it wants to focus on the areas of development.
The key areas of focus for UDP are water efficiency and energy efficiency. In this era
of high competition, the focus on sustainability and CSR has become a key focus
area for organization as it helps organizations to position themselves as responsible
players in the market (Berry, Whaley, Davidson & Saman, 2014).
2. Findings & Discussion
The project of Perth Skies Development is a key project for Unos Property
Development. The key requirements for any energy company is electricity (energy)
and water. Therefore, it is important that the organization should have the plan to
address energy and water as a part of its sustainable initiative. It is important that the
CSR strategy of the company should be part of the business strategy (Berry,
Whaley, Davidson & Saman, 2014). The corporate growth strategy of Unos Property
Development can be discussed as:
2.1 Corporate growth strategy
The company operates with the growth strategy of cost leadership. The
company has a vision of affordable housing for all and the company achieves this
vision by providing low cost homes. The company wants to do cost optimization so
that it can pass the cost benefits to its consumers (Nicholls & Hair, 2016). The
Corporate Social Responsibility strategy for Unos Property Development can be
discussed as:
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2.2 CSR Strategy
The company is still a start-up company and the company are in a nascent
stage to establish its CSR strategy. The CSR strategy for Unos Property
Development is to focus on meeting the expectations of different stakeholders
without compromising on the profitability or the business objectives of the company.
It is believed that that strong political and legal aspects are required to drive social
culture of CSR (Byrne, Dallas & Newman, 2014). The decisions of market are
influenced by political ideology on which the society is relying. Economy is now at
the middle track of globalization. Today, Australia has opened many doors for
international market and this resulted in expansion of market size (Nicholls & Hair,
2016). Similarly, this thing happened with various other countries. The CSR strategy
for UPD is to create value for its stakeholders. The CSR approach of UPD can be
highlighted as:
The above diagram shows that the shared value delivered to stakeholders should
derive from the overall CSR approach of the company. The company should also
have the objectives for its plan towards efficient use of energy and water. For next
one year, the company should look for 10% optimization or energy saving for its
Perth Project. It is also important that the focus on CSR should also help the
company to save the cost. For example, use of solar panel is actually good for
company as it would be able to save its cost. Moreover, the sustainable approach
should not take a top-down approach. The focus on sustainable practices should be
practiced across different level of employees within the organization. The employee
should be free to come up with their ideas of sustainability and contribute towards
corporate social responsibility (Baumgartner, 2014). The key recommendations for
UPD can be discussed as:
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3. Recommendations
It is important that the company should have a long-term plan towards
sustainability and corporate social responsibility (Bosch-Badia, Montllor-Serrats &
Tarrazon-Rodon, 2017)). The below recommendations would help UPD to establish
sustainability as a culture within the organizations.
3.1 Inclusion of different stakeholders
It is recommended that the management of UPD should include its internal
and external stakeholders to develop and implement the plan of sustainability. The
effective communication is the key. It is recommended that the company should
convey the key drivers of change towards sustainability to its employees.
3.2 use of green sources of energy
The immediate project for UPD is the Perth Skies Development. It is
recommended that UPD must use the green form for energy in this project. For
example, UPD should install the solar panels in this project. At the same time, the
company should have the provision of managing the water. It is recommended that
UPD should have a Sewage Treatment Plan that would re-use the water (Hansen,
Zvezdov, Harms & Lenssen, 2015).
3.3 Use benchmarking to pass the benefits from one project to another
UPD would have multiple constructions projects in Australia. It is
recommended that the company should have a sharing model wherein the learning
form one project would be pass to another. For example, the use of renewable
sources of energy in Perth Skies Development should be passed to other upcoming
projects. The organization can save a lot with the benchmarking approach
(Baumgartner, 2014).
4. Conclusion
The above paper discusses the sustainable business practices for UPD. With
the above discussion it can be said that the CSR policies and the approach of the
company should be linked with its business level strategy. The report highlights that
the key focus area for UPD are energy efficiency and water management. The
integrated approach and the support of different stakeholders would help the
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company to have strong sustainable culture in place. The company would be able to
save the cost with its approach towards CSR and sustainability only with a long-term
vision.
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References
Baumgartner, R.J., 2014. Managing corporate sustainability and CSR: A conceptual
framework combining values, strategies and instruments contributing to sustainable
development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental
Management, 21(5), pp.258-271.
Berry, S., Whaley, D., Davidson, K. and Saman, W., 2014. Do the numbers stack
up? Lessons from a zero carbon housing estate. Renewable Energy, 67, pp.80-89.
Bosch-Badia, M.T., Montllor-Serrats, J. and Tarrazon-Rodon, M.A., 2017. Efficiency
and Sustainability of CSR Projects. Sustainability, 9(10), p.1714.
Byrne, J., Dallas, S. and Newman, P., 2014. Optimising Residential Water
Efficiency–The Josh’s House Project. In Oz Water’14 Conference proceedings.
Australian Water Association.
Hansen, E.G., Zvezdov, D., Harms, D. and Lenssen, G., 2015. Advancing corporate
sustainability, CSR, and business ethics. Business and Professional Ethics Journal.
Nicholls, J. and Hair, J.F., 2016. An Exploratory Study of Ethics, CSR and
Sustainability Education in Graduate/Undergraduate Business Schools: Specifically
in the Marketing Curriculum. In Thriving in a New World Economy(pp. 243-246).
Springer, Cham.
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