Analyzing Sustainable Leadership Practices at Morrison UK

This essay provides an overview of sustainable leadership practices, focusing on Morrison, a British multinational retailing company. It discusses the benefits and principles of sustainable leadership, emphasizing how it helps organizations gain a competitive advantage and enhance their brand image. The essay also addresses global challenges such as climate change, human rights exploitation, and waste management, highlighting Morrison's strategies to mitigate these issues. Furthermore, it examines internal challenges related to employee training and organizational culture, along with Morrison's CSR activities, including donations to schools and support for farming apprenticeships. The analysis concludes that sustainability is essential for companies to protect resources for future generations and enhance their reputation.

Essays on
sustainable
leadership

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY......................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................5
References:......................................................................................................5
Online-............................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Sustainable leadership is the concept of performing those leadership
practices which will also focus on providing benefit to environment and
society (Latiffi and Zulkiffli, 2021). Here, the main aim of leaders is to
influence their subordinates to enhance their skills and talents for achieving
organisational aim by fulfilling the needs and wants of society and
environment. It is most important concept for a organisation because it helps
the organisation to gain competitive advantage and gain high brand
reputation by concerning about environment and societal benefit. Morrison is
a British multinational retailing company and it is founded by William
Morrison in the year 1899 and it is headquartered in Bradford, London, UK.
The following essay will covers benefits of sustainable leadership, principles
of sustainable leadership within the organisation and theories of sustainable
leadership and challenges relevant to implement sustainable leadership in
Morrison.
MAIN BODY
Leadership is the concept of influencing people to follow the idea and
instructions of an leader for the benefit of whole group of organisation and
the individual who influence others to follow their idea is called a effective
leader. Whereas sustainable leaders focus to set strategies and monitor the
performance of their subordinates to meet the aim of fulfilling responsibilities
toward environment, society and financial performance of the company
(Sustainable Leadership: Talent requirements for sustainable enterprises,
2016). There are various kinds of benefits for an organisation to become
sustainable leader within their industry. It helps to gain brand image and
competitive advantage for the organisation. According to a Natural
Marketing Institute of US, 58% of customers consider to purchase their goods
and services more from those companies which are more focused toward
sustainable activities (6 Benefits of Becoming a Sustainable Business, 2016).
In context of Morrison, they have gained competitive advantage better when
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they started following sustainable activities such as reducing plastic bags for
packaging of their products. Hence, sustainable leadership helps them to
gain their brand image and competitive advantage. It also helps to attract
employees and investors because nowadays employees and investors likes
to work with those companies which are more focused to sustainability due
to its high scope. Investors avoid investing in those companies which are
implicated in social welfare scandals and ecological disasters.
There are seven principles of sustainable leadership such as
sustainable leadership lasts which states that sustainable leadership includes
planning and preparing for succession, sustainable leadership spreads which
include that sustainable leadership is not the task performed by a single
individual but a group of employees within an organisation can make it
successful for their company to focus on sustainability factors and there are
few other principles (THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP,
2018). In context of Morrison, their leaders must plan effectively about their
targets and activities which can be performed to achieve those targets. Their
leaders must focus on resolving every risk which they forecast as a obstacle
for their path of success.
In context of Morrison, they follow various sustainable activities such
as they offer their customers fresh food items to eat, ensuring food safety,
supporting British farmers and enhancing animal welfare (We are
responding, 2021). They are also focusing to reduce their plastic packaging,
reducing packaging wastage and few others for maintaining their
environment safe. There are few of the global challenges related to
sustainable leadership and these challenges are also faced by Morrison and
they make effective strategies to mitigate these challenges. Climate change
is one of the biggest challenges for sustainable leadership (Woo and Kang,
2020). It includes several weather changes, rising temperature, negative
impacts of Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG). Climate change can impact upon
Morrison by impacting negative upon their security of food supply, impact on
economies and few other impacts. In context of Morrison, they are trying to
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reduce their GHG emissions. They launch science-based operational carbon
reduction target in the year 2019. This strategy helps them to reduce
emissions by 33% by 2025, 53% by2030 and net zero emission by the year
2050. Morrison is currently working with Carbon Trust to set science based
target for reducing emission and achieve their target of becoming
sustainable leaders within their market. Exploiting Human Rights is also one
of the other global challenges related to sustainability. There is big supply
chain process and the labours and farmers are unaware about the actual
prices of their products. Hence, they sold it to companies in lower prices and
the middleman like transport agencies and few others will add their charges
to the products to gain their own profit. Morrison respect internationally
recognised human rights of the people who help them to sell their products
whether they are farmers or a sales person. Hence, they focus on fair
working conditions within their supermarkets and hypermarkets. Health and
safety and gender equality of workers are also their main concerns. In
context of Morrison, their Ethical Trading Policy and Code establish key
requirements will help them to mitigate the risk related to suppliers by
providing them their rights. This will also help to gain high satisfaction of
suppliers. They also help their suppliers by focusing on their complaints and
issues and monitor the whole process of supply chain to recognize the root of
issue so that they can work to mitigate the problem as soon as possible.
They also work in collaboration with civil society organisations to analyse the
adverse impact and opportunities for improvement within their supply chain
management.
On the other hand, waste management is also one of the most
concerning issue for a company (Trivedi, Trivedi and Goswami, 2018). Most
of the companies including Morrison is are working to manage their waste
management and try to reuse their packaging items. Managing waste is not
only for environmental perspective but it provide efficiency throughout the
operations. In context of Morrison, they set the target to open their own
brand for plastic packaging which can be recyclable, reusable and
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compostable. They also use paper grocery bags for their customers to carry
their products from their stores.
Some of the issue which is faced by Morrison internally are providing training
to their employees to use new strategies to follow the sustainability in their
organisation. Most of the organisation is unable to manage the training
session for their employees regarding new changes and due to which they
are unable to reach their targets. It is most important for organisations to
take the suggestions of their employees before making any change in their
organisation so that employees will become aware about the changes.
Secondly, they are also require to train their employees well. Hence, one of
the most important factor for effective management of companies is to hire
skilled and talented employees and retain them within the organisation for
longer period of time by providing them growth opportunities (Kristijono,
2021). In context of Morrison, their degree apprentice and graduate
programmes plays an important role to attract new employees who are
having effective skills and talents to adopt changes and work accordingly as
soon as possible.
They are also focusing on the feedbacks of their employees so that
they will understand what their employees expect and what they want from
their company. They achieve the colleague engagement score of 77%.
Another challenge for Morrison related to their sustainability leadership is
that their working environment. In case they adopt any new strategy for their
sustainability practices than their organisational cultural stability also get
impacted. Hence, it is important for the organisation to focus on their
organisational culture and make efforts to maintain it properly. In context of
Morrison, they provide all variety of tools, resources related to mental,
physical and financial well-being. They are also having annual calendar of
well-being campaigns. One of the well-being campaigns is related to stress
and mental health awareness and staying healthy at work. On the other
hand, Morrison is also having partnership with Employee Assistant
Programme provider which provide the facilities to contact with employees
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24/7 to provide them confidential advice and support. Hence, this is how
they handle the challenges of their organisation related to sustainability. In
context of CSR activities, Morrison Foundation donated 7,300 brand new
books to the schools nominated by England, Wales and Scotland. On the
other hand, they are also having Farming Apprenticeship Fund where the
employer who pays the apprenticeship levy will get 25% of annual
apprenticeship levy funds. This will help to influence more farmers to
produce quality seeds and eatable ingredients.
There are many other challenges faced by Morrison internally to
manage their sustainable activities to achieve competitive advantage. Such
issues and challenges are preparing appropriate budgets for managing all
CSR activities, influencing customers to use the new products and services
and many others (Widisatria and Nawangsari, 2021). Hence, Morrison can
prepare the budgets appropriately and make sure that their all CSR and
sustainable activities will cover the budget appropriately. Secondly, they can
use effective promotional tools to influence their customers about their
sustainable activities so that they will generate interest for purchasing their
retailing products from Morrison. They are also focused on animal welfare
activities because their brand meat, dairy products, fish products and few
others are 100% approved standard of farm production. They do not accept
genetically modified material from cloned animals. Hence, Morrison directly
deal with farmers and sell fresh beef, lamb and pork which provide effective
quality of meat. It is essential for suppliers to sign the declaration with each
delivery which they have made with Morrison to provide a guarantee that the
animals are neither clones nor the progeny of clones. They also prohibited
triploid Atlantic salmon due to welfare concerns. This shows that Morrison is
concern about the health of their customers and they will not sell any meat
product which will harm the health of their customers. On the other hand, all
the cosmetics products and are not tested on animals. Hence, the company
did not harm any animal for their personal profit. Morrison is also having
strict requirements for using sow stalls, battery cages, single panning and
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few others. The farm standard policy covers from UK, EU and non -EU
country of origin (Key Animal Welfare Policies, 2022). The fish policy of
Morrison prohibits fin chipping. Morrison is also having strict rules on
pesticides and they also focus to promote biodiversity in farming. They use
non-chemical products for pest and disease control (Enhancing animal
welfare and biodiversity, 2022).
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above information that sustainability is one of
the most essential concepts for any company where companies are using
their resources in such a manner which will protect the resources for future
generation by minimizing the wastage. Secondly, using those practices
which will provide benefit to environment and society will also a part of
sustainable activities. In context of organisation, they can follow many
various sustainable activities such as waste management, managing the
impacts of climate change, aware their workers about human rights and
many others. This will help them to enhance their brand reputation and gain
competitive advantage.
References:
Books and Journals
Latiffi, A.A. and Zulkiffli, N.A., 2021. Sustainable Construction Projects: The
Level of Understanding on Leadership Skills among Project
Managers. International Journal of Real Estate Studies, 15(1), pp.39-
48.
Trivedi, K., Trivedi, P. and Goswami, V., 2018. Sustainable marketing
strategies: Creating business value by meeting consumer
expectation. International Journal of Management, Economics and
Social Sciences (IJMESS), 7(2), pp.186-205.
Kristijono, N.H., 2021. Leadership in sustainable investing: hermeneutic
phenomenology of leaders from top global investment management
firms (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Pelita Harapan).
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Widisatria, D. and Nawangsari, L.C., 2021. The Influence of Green
Transformational Leadership and Motivation to Sustainable Corporate
Performance with Organizational Citizenship Behavior for the
Environment as a Mediating: Case Study at PT Karya Mandiri Sukses
Sentosa. European Journal of Business and Management
Research, 6(3), pp.118-123.
Online-
Sustainable Leadership: Talent requirements for sustainable enterprises,
2016. [Online] Available Through :
<https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/reports-surveys/sustainable-
leadership-talent-requirements-for-sustainable-enterprises/>
6 Benefits of Becoming a Sustainable Business, 2016. [Online] Available
Through :
<https://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/03/6-benefits-of-becoming-a-
sustainable-business/>
THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP, 2018. [Online]
Available Through :
<https://www.theedadvocate.org/the-seven-principles-of-sustainable-
leadership/>
We are responding, 2021. [Online] Available Through :
<https://www.morrisons-corporate.com/globalassets/corporatesite/corporate-
responsibility/sustainability-report-2021/morrisons_sr_2021_interactive.pdf>
Key Animal Welfare Policies, 2022. [Online] Available Through :
<https://www.morrisons-farming.com/how-we-work/animal-welfare/key-
animal-welfare-policies/>
Enhancing animal welfare and biodiversity, 2022. [Online] Available
Through :
<https://www.morrisons-corporate.com/morrisons-sustainability/purpose/
animal-welfare/>
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