Developing a Sustainable Organization: Strategic Roles and Challenges

This report examines the concept of sustainability in business, focusing on its environmental and societal impacts. It details the roles and responsibilities of a sustainable strategic manager, including performance management, planning, data analysis, risk management, and coaching. The report also explores strategic business management tools such as life cycle assessment, energy efficiency, carbon footprint tracking, and workforce development. Furthermore, it addresses the economic and ethical dilemmas faced by strategic leaders in balancing long-term sustainability goals with short-term objectives, considering environmental issues, economic recessions, and product quality. The case of Climeworks is presented as an example of a company addressing climate change through carbon capture technology, highlighting its strategies for market development and sustainability.

Building A Sustainable
Organisation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Roles and responsibility as a sustainable strategic manager.......................................................1
Concepts and tools of the strategic business management..........................................................3
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................4
The economic and ethical dilemmas that strategic leaders face in the process of balancing long
and short term goals....................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
References:.......................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
In the business world the sustainable ideas have a huge impact on the global business and its
surroundings. Sustainability in any business can be described as to doing business without
creating a negative impact on the environment and the society. Sustainability in any business
usually expresses two different factors that are impact of the business over the environment and
the impact on the society. The objective of the business is to execute such strategies which could
have good impacts on the areas such as environment, economic and community(Ch’ng, Cheah
and Amran, 2021). In this report, the roles and responsibilities of people as a sustainable strategic
manager will be covered. Also the concepts and tools of the strategic business management.
Then the economic and ethical dilemmas that the strategic leaders face in the process of
balancing the long and short term goals would also be known.
MAIN BODY
Sustainable businesses not only tackle which are affected by the businesses, but can also help
drive the business success. The actions taken to build a sustainable business helps the company
and the society for a long period of time.
Task 1
Roles and responsibility as a sustainable strategic manager
Sustainable strategic managers are people who develop, execute and management of strategies
and decisions that are very key to the business. The following are some of the key roles of the
strategic managers:
 Performance management: The crucial roles of the business is to develop and manage
Key performance indicators of the concerned business. In this they forecasts and analyse
the performance of the Climeswork company on a consistent basis. This helps the
business in setting accurate goals and budgets(Cosenz, Rodrigues and Rosati, 2020). It
also helps in the proper resource planning of the business activities. The managers of the
company must look over the productivity of the business on more regular basis.
 Planning: This is also a big role played by the managers. Their job here is to identify a
specific time and resources that are important for the company. The managers give lot of
focus on the fact that the plans are developed and executed perfectly and that the plans
are evaluated well to cope up with the considerable and actionable requirements. An
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effective plan is something which can create good focus and improvement in operations
of the work. The company must consider the most suitable strategies to make sure the
strategies are properly sustainable for the business and the society(Dias, and et.al., 2020).
 Analysing data: From the points which were talked about in the above points the work of
the managers includes retrieving the relevant data and to analyse the outcomes of the
plans executed by the managers. This could also be beneficial for them to properly
evaluate the strategies and the know the potential areas of improvement. These strategies
are then used for the better analytics to set standards which could be used to measure the
long term market strategies that could be aiding the financial and resource decisions. As
the companies have their focus set on the sustainability, the managers must retrieve and
analyse their data.
 Management by risk: This can be considered as the most vital role played by the
managers because here they identify the possible threats and set up effective strategies to
tackle the risk factors. It helps the business to understand, and carry off expectations as
this helps the transformation in relations with its customers, suppliers and the employees.
With the reference to the Climeswork company the managers must focus on the
predicting all the dangers that the business may have in the forthcoming time.
 Coaching: Strategic managers have more than just strategising and evaluating things. As
they have to coach and train the department supervisors and help them in making their
own plans to establish proper goals. They can also assist the supervisors in planning the
strategies which could be later on analysed and managed so that the whole company
focuses on the same goals and objectives. In context to the company, they need to make
sure that their supervisors get the proper coaching from the strategic managers(Dzwigol,
2020).
Climeworks took a multi-pronged approach when seeking market opportunities for its
technology:
 Emissions Reversal
The company resolution was a testament to the businesses that wanted to go carbon neutral. For
example- In 2017, the Climeswork united the carbFix2 project, where they comparted the Direct
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Air Capture and Storage(DACS) plant in collaboration with the utility company Reykjavik
Energy and geothermal energy provider ON power.
 Beverages
The company also gave their testament to beverages company by co-relating with the goal of
providing CO2 To them. One of the first things they did was to partner with Coca-Cola
Switzerland to test its technology.
 Fuel
While the food , beverage and agriculture were accounting for a limited global market, the fuel
markets was a new venture for them. Air-captured carbon dioxide could be combined with
hydrogen and turned into a fossil fuel substitute. One of the examples of that is the DAC plant in
Troia, Italy.
Concepts and tools of the strategic business management
Strategic business management means that the forming and carrying out of the main objectives
of an organisation. The strategies are formed by completing the proper resources and the full
examination of the internal and external surrounding of the business. This allows the business to
allocate the resources and to the pave a path to the business by developing rules and regulations
to attain the goals. Following are some of the tools of strategic business management:
 Life cycle assessment tools
This tool helps the business to get an overview of the Life cycle assessment and also helps in
allocating the useful components of the techniques. This tool is for the pre determination of the
use of industrial organisations and academic campuses etc. to describe how to integrate a life
cycle of the sustainability of the business(Goni, and et.al., 2021).
 Energy efficiency tool
This tool is helpful in providing the resources that are in application in the industries. This can be
of use for the knowing the areas of improvement measured by the possible improvement of
energy.
 Carbon foot print tool
This tool assists the managers and Climeswork company in tracking the solid waste and help in
preparation for the reductions of green house gases by some of the renowned waste management
practices.
 Toxic chemical and pollution prevention tool
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It helps the companies in estimating the chemicals produced at the workplace and toxic the
deceases that happen to the people due to the contact of the skin to a chemical during the factory
operations.
 Community development tool
Through this tool the companies can find the ways to examine the communities in order to
expand the business. This enables the business to pick the rights sites for the work and make
proper decisions based on the numerical sets including the factory information.
 Workforce development tool
This is tool used for e-learning for the professionals and the employees. This is also a
requirement for the economic development of the company(Makadok, Burton and Barney,
2018).
 Workers safety tool
This tool is an interaction tool for the training purpose in consideration to the workplace safety
and health. The training is also helpful in understanding the user interface. At some organisations
there are few modules used to get reliable ideas.
All these tools can be well used by the company to form strategies for building a sustainable
environment.
Task 2
The economic and ethical dilemmas that strategic leaders face in the process of balancing long
and short term goals.
 Environmental issues:
The organisations are usually invested in planning for the improvement of the profits and the
growth of the business. The strategic leaders forget that there are some other issues that they
create while planning and executing their profitability. These issues are the environmental
problems which they usually end up creating themselves. In context to the Climeswork company
there managers have taken some initiatives to make the processes cleaner and safer for the
environment. They have been using some technologies to capture CO2 and save the
climate(Mohaghegh, Blasi and Groessler, 2021).
 Recession:
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Another economic factor that is hugely affecting the decision making processes of the managers
is the recession which can be something to completely devour the economic conditions of the
companies. It is the time period where the temporary fall of the economic conditions take place.
A good example of the this recession could be the pandemic era which made the GDP of the
countries fall very low. The activities like importing, exporting and the financing were also
decreased and the companies employees had to themselves be in a situation of dilemma. In these
situations the strategic managers are the ones who need to be creating specific strategies that
could be helpful in saving the employees jobs and making sure that the company does not end up
getting too much losses.
 Compromise with the quality of the products:
The business leaders can sometimes be making compromises with the quality of the products to
just involve the production better for the company and make sure that the cost does not exceed
the required criteria of the business. But the strategy of lowering down the quality of the
products could in fact end up getting not liked by the customers. These situations can end up
declining the goodwill of the company and make their business unprofitable instead (Peralta,
Carrillo‐Hermosilla and Crecente, 2019).
It is very much needed for the company to be figuring out the issues that are in consideration to
the economic and ethical dilemmas that strategic leaders face in the process of balancing long
and short term goals. The company usually focuses on several things to complete their objectives
but ends up not building up enough ethical and economic capabilities for the company to succeed
in the long run. The managers of the company Climeworks should focus on the quality of the
products that will be able to successfully initiate the better strategies for the customer's
satisfaction and this will help the company in staying relevant to the trends of the business world.
How Climeswork's business is helping stop the climate change:
Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher knew they were in a different route than their mates.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases contributed to climate change, which were likely to
result in high sea levels caused by melting glaciers and droughts.. While many of the projected
solutions to climate change intented at reducing carbon emissions, Climeworks had other
approaches. Instead, they developed a technology to capture CO2 directly from the air. While
identifying potential markets, they discovered the greenhouses of agricultural enterprise
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Gebrüder Meier Primanatura AG in Hinwil, Switzerland. The greenhouses happened to be
situated next to a the waste incineration plant KEZO. Their collaborators proposed a deal: The
company would capture CO2 directly from ambient air and sell it on as a raw material to
Gebrüder Meier.
There were also question marks around the economic viability of the solution. After raising
enough money in 2011 to build a demonstrator that captured just one kilogram of carbon dioxide
from the air per day, Climeswork had a proof of the technology. The financing rounds, which
occurred about every two years, enabled the company to hire new employees and scale up its
technology. Despite the uncertainties, the vision of these bold entrepreneurs succeeded in racking
up a list of supporters. Climeworks was awarded CHF 130,000 from Venture Kick and also the
Swiss Excellence Award. To build a sustainable enterprise, the company focused on finding
people with a shared sense of requirement. One of the key issues Climeworks needed to address
was reducing the doubt around the goodness of the solution, meaning distinguishing and
leveraging market demand. Since the cost of Climeworks’ technology was too advanced to scale,
it remained solely within market niches. But the vision of the company was so true to the nature
that the negatives were not an issue.
CONCLUSION
In this report, the sustainable ideas for a business were made known. The strategies and the
approaches that will be helpful in building up the sustainability of any business were also
understood in this report. This assignment has been divided into different tasks. The task 1
explains the roles and the responsibility as a sustainable strategic manager in the company
Climeworks. It also describes the concepts and tools of the strategic business management. The
task 2 was to understand how the economic and the ethical dilemmas that the strategic leaders
face in the process of balancing the long and the short term goals. And hence it can be concluded
from the above report that the responsibilities of a strategic manager is more complex than it is
assumed. Their roles and responsibilities of the strategic managers are working through the
profitability by keeping the risks away from the business and its activities.
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References:
Books and Journals
Ch’ng, P.C., Cheah, J. and Amran, A., 2021. Eco-innovation practices and sustainable business
performance: The moderating effect of market turbulence in the Malaysian technology
industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 283, p.124556.
Cosenz, F., Rodrigues, V.P. and Rosati, F., 2020. Dynamic business modeling for sustainability:
Exploring a system dynamics perspective to develop sustainable business
models. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29(2), pp.651-664.
Dias, and et.al., 2020. Developing sustainable business models: Local knowledge acquisition and
tourism lifestyle entrepreneurship. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, pp.1-20.
Dzwigol, H., 2020. Methodological and empirical platform of triangulation in strategic
management. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 19(4), pp.1-8.
Gao, P. and Li, J., 2020. Understanding sustainable business model: A framework and a case
study of the bike-sharing industry. Journal of cleaner production, 267, p.122229.
Goni, and et.al., 2021. Sustainable business model: A review and framework development. Clean
Technologies and Environmental Policy, 23(3), pp.889-897.
Makadok, R., Burton, R. and Barney, J., 2018. A practical guide for making theory contributions
in strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 39(6), pp.1530-1545.
Mohaghegh, M., Blasi, S. and Groessler, A., 2021. Dynamic capabilities linking lean practices
and sustainable business performance. Journal of Cleaner Production, 322, p.129073.
Peralta, A., Carrillo‐Hermosilla, J. and Crecente, F., 2019. Sustainable business model
innovation and acceptance of its practices among Spanish entrepreneurs. Corporate
Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 26(5), pp.1119-1134.
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