Sustainability Leader in a Green Business Era

A Middle East Perspective

Amr E. Sukkar

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781951527860
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

This book highlights the principles and practices that lead to sustainable and positive leadership within SME.

Most organizations would say that they are interested in becoming more effective and efficient–which is almost impossible without competent leadership. Bad leaders are corrosive to any organization, thus organizations today must work to attract leaders who promote clarity and honesty.

This book highlights the principles and practices that lead to sustainable and positive leadership within SME. It also provides a step-by step approach for the attributes of leaders who can run an SME and who have a predisposition to focus on environmental and resource sustainability. The text begins with a brief history of the concept of sustainability as it applies to both performance and reporting–implementing sustainability in an SME begins with the development of practices and activities.

The author explains the required skills to sustain business and environment in order to be prepared for the challenges and opportunities of today's world and enjoy a successful life. Sukkar will inspire SME's leaders to be aware of these considerations, and apply them to the role they play in firms–not just doing things right but doing the right things right.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Chapter Objectives

• • Understand the business sustainability concept.
• • Impart basic knowledge about the UN SDGS.
• • Create awareness about the sustainable development challenges in Egypt.

Overview of the Origin
of Sustainable Development Concept

Overpopulation and globalization of markets have added to domestic pressures from overexploitation of resources all over the world. The relevancy of the environmental sustainability concept has increased in many countries as there is more awareness and understanding of the impact of environmental issues on society and economic growth. Research on the natural environment and its relation to business has developed considerably over the years. Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the United States are expecting economic, social, and environmental factors to convince the manufacturing companies to consider sustainability more seriously. Nowadays, corporate sustainability is an important topic for both academic research and businesses.

Overview of “sustainable development”: the term “sustainable development” was first made popular by the WCEB, also known as the World Commission on Economic Development. The WCEB defined sustainable development as “development action targeted for meeting the needs of the present without hindering future generations from fulfilling their own needs.” The WCEB stated that in order to realize sustainable development, the adoption of environmental, economic, and equity principles is necessary. Such a statement was, then, highly questioned due to the old prejudice that caring for the environment and establishing social equity go against making money. Over time, corporations began to show commitment to achieving sustainable development. With regard to principles of sustainable development, Elkington (1998) stated that sustainable development can only be achieved by applying three basic principles which are environmental integrity, economic prosperity, and social equity.

Environmental integrity: The environmental integrity principle guarantees that the ecosystem, that is, land, air, and water, is not harmed by any human activities. It is perceived that the ecosystem has a very limited regenerative ability; therefore, human-related events such as population growth and pollution compromise the integrity of the environment. Thus, if the natural environment is, by any means, threatened or compromised then the basic resources necessary for human life, such as food and water, will be threatened as well.

Social equity: The social equity principle guarantees that all members in a society have equal opportunities and equal access to resources. The WCED document released in 1987 stated that sustainability is a universal goal implying that all members of future generations, members of developing and developed countries alike, have the right to equal access to resources.

Economic prosperity: The economic prosperity principle endorses an adequate quality of life through organizations and individual members in society. Economic prosperity calls for the creation and distribution of goods that will most likely elevate the quality of life around the world in addition to the establishment of open and competitive markets that endorse efficiency, wealth creation, and innovation. It was found that economic prosperity is heavily linked to social equity and environmental integrity. For instance, to meet basic needs such as food and shelter, people tend to compromise the long-term health of the natural environment in the process. It is estimated that millions of hectares of forest areas are annihilated annually for the production of fuels, wood, and fertile land for agriculture. Therefore, it is perceived that a society that fails to realize economic prosperity will eventually compromise the health and well-being of its individuals.

Corporate sustainable development: Business is the production of goods or services for the customers in exchange for other services, goods, or money. Particular organizations and the market sector can be referred to as businesses. When many persons are working in one company, they are making business to produce a specific service or good in a good manner in order to raise their company in the market to reach for the lead and to be one of the most important companies in its field.

Sustainable development is a new way for people to use resources before they run out; in other words it is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. For the business community, sustainable development is extremely important and more than just window-dressing, as the companies can compete by adopting sustainable practices in order to increase both shareholder value and their markets. The company’s value differentiates it from its competitors as the products and services that yield tangible results for the company’s target customers. There are two important parts of a business model, which are production and marketing. The production side combines many factors including activities and mechanisms for providing goods and services. On the other hand, the marketing side combines those mechanisms in order to sell the products, whether they are goods or services. The latter is also known as capturing value but the first is known as creating value. The economic, social, and environmental benefits can be delivered by the business model for sustainable development.

The success of the business models for sustainable development can be determined by disparate factors; trade-offs among different sustainable development goals (economic, social, environmental) need to be recognized and addressed, and the ongoing monitoring and evaluation need to be built into business model. The idea of sustainable development has become a way of creating affirmation, yet it is not the first thought for some business executives. For most, the thought stays hypothetical and theoretical. Guaranteeing an affiliation’s capital base is a recognized business rule. The associations are unable to perceive the likelihood of extension of this idea to the world norm and HR. If sensible progression is to fulfill its potential, it must be fused into the masterminding and estimation systems of business endeavors. For that to happen, the thought must be verbalized in words which are common to business pioneers.

The business response was the idea of eco-effectiveness, uniting ecological and financial execution to make more regard for business itself as well as for the whole gathering, fundamentally, with less impact. Numerous organizations are today close to the cutting edge toward eco-capability, and it has in like manner transformed into a comprehensively recognized methodology supported by the European Commission. Clearly, more businesses need to get eco-capability, not only the multinationals arranged in the industrialized countries, but the small and medium endeavors in all sectors in all countries. Sustainable advancement is based on three factors: financial development, natural parity, and social advancement. These things have dependably been part of the motivation for maintainability; however, the social factor has received less consideration. That is changing; far more noteworthy attention is being set now on social advancement, particularly on what business is doing. This has opened up a number of issues. For a firm to achieve sustainable development it must first fulfill all three basic principles.

Environmental integrity may be achieved through corporate environmental management. Corporate environmental management is an approach made by a firm to reduce its ecological footprint that is the impact of its production processes on the environment, such as waste and carbon emissions. Such management can be achieved by pollution control and product stewardship. Pollution control refers to the proper disposal of wastes by a company, while product stewardship refers to using fewer materials for product design and proper recycling and reuse of products at the end of their life. Companies may seek social equity through corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility encompasses three processes: environmental assessment, stake-holder management, and social issues management. Environmental assessment involves the identification of social, economic, and environmental issues and responding to them accordingly. Stakeholder management involves responding to individuals outside organizations as well as responding to the natural environment (Starik 1995). On the other hand, social management refers to tackling social issues, for instance, the decision not to employ children as labor.

Economic prosperity can be achieved through value creation. A firm can create value via their own products and goods. It can create value through the production of novel and different products desired by consumers, thereby elevating the effectiveness of its products which can be achieved by decreasing input costs or achieving production efficiencies. A firm can capture the value it creates by selling its goods or services at prices that exceed their costs. To conclude, the road to implementing a sustainable development philosophy will be different for smaller businesses, but with ingenuity, perseverance, and cooperation, they can achieve the desired result. In the end it is apparent that corporate prosperity is dependent upon how successful an organization is at achieving sustainable development. In addition to achieving corporate welfare, sustainable development also constitutes an ethical duty that must be exerted by the present generations for the well-being of future generations. There are hundreds of definitions of sustainability. According to Andreas and Cooperman, a well-known definition of the term sustainability related to business or development is the one coined by Gro Harlem, former prime minister of Norway and chairperson of the Brundtland Commission. The concept of sustainability is included as a requirement to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (Andreas et al. 2011, p. xii). More recently, researchers have proposed that we should focus more on interdependencies between business and society and take collaborative approaches to create system change (Baas 2008; Porter 2006; Boons and Roome 2005; Svendsen and Laberge 2005; in Loorbach, van Bakel, Whiteman, and Rotmans 2010). This change will cause SMEs to move from being careless of environmental concerns in their business plans and actions, to measuring their environmentally related performance, for example, in terms of waste production or resource use, adoption of ISO 14001, or how regulation influences performance. Moreover, some researchers have labeled as “enviropreneurship” the efforts made by individuals to bring ideas and motivations to increase the ecological sustainability concept of their organization.

For many years, CEOs of both major companies and international organizations such as the United Nations have talked about, or even put on a pedestal, the topic of sustainability as an inevitable challenge to change, as well as an imperative to change.

The UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) as a Broad Universal Context for Sustainability

According to UN Environment Management group, the sustainable development goals (SDGs, also referred to the global goals) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The key element of 2030 Agenda, they address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. The goals interconnect and, in order to ensure ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Abstract
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Definition of Terms
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index
• Backcover