Management and Sustainability
Coca-Cola has the largest production of soft drinks in the world; this company announced that almost 100% of its very new coolers and machines would be HFC free that hydro fluorocarbon free within 2015. Amazingly this initiative is such big that it can alone effect on the global carbon emissions as if 11 million cars are taken away from the road in a year. Similarly the Fairmount Hotel has also done something similar work. It has set up a rooftop beehives in order to help and try strengthening the honeybee’s population, which has mysteriously abandoning the hives and has been dying by millions throughout the world.
This Colony Collapse Disorder other could have been extremely disastrous consequences as about 1/3 rd of food that we consume comes from trees and plants that are subjected to bee pollination. 6 hives are homes to about 360,000 bees are spread inside and outside the city premises and keeps on producing supply of an award winning good quality honey. The top executives of the General Electric Company, in 2004, voted against the CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s plan regarding green business.
The good part is Immelt refused a ‘no’ and thus today this business program called Ecomagination, has become one of the worlds greatly recognized green corporate programs. This program has reduced the emissions produced by the company to about more that 30% and has made $100 million cost saving. This program has also fostered development of new 80 services and products that generated a annual revenue of $17 billion approx. Immelt said that going green have become ten times good than he ever imagined. Green is the new in!
Until late 1960s, some organisations and people have paid attentions towards the environmental related consequences to their actions and decisions. Though certain groups have been concerned with saving natural resources, the only important reference for protecting the environment, was the famous request “Please Do Not Litter”. The various environmental disasters did at least one good thing that it brought a sense of environmentalism in different groups and organisations and even in different individuals. Now managers of different organisations have started considering the impact cause by their organisations that effects natural environment. This is what known as Green Management. The question is what are the things mangers should know on this concept?
How organizations do goes Green?
There are plenty of things that managers can do to save the environment. Some just do that much to meet their social obligations and which are bounded by laws. However there are some who are socially responsible and changes their products quality and manufacturing process so that they are eco friendly. Just as Fiji water has taken an initiative to conserve water, use renewable energy resource and forest preservation. To produce the fibres which are used in carpets, Mohawk Industries uses renewable plastic containers. Also Google & Intel has taken initiative to make their customers and makers get oriented with technologies that use less energy. World’s most popular and largest oil production companies is also going green by following tough production rules and works with groups like Greenpeace & Global Witness.
UPS being the world’s greatest package delivery agency has taken several initiatives by retrofitting aircraft with modern technologies & uses fuel-efficient energy to efficiently dispatch its fleet of the brown trucks to use alternative fuel for running those trucks. But these examples do not make it clear that how these organisations are going green. One particular model uses Shades of Green for describing the different approaches different companies makes to make the environment green and healthier.
The 1st approach, the light green approach does only what it is to be legally bounded. In this particular approach the organisations do what social obligations it has. They just obey certain and rules and the regulations by law and does a little sensitive work for the environment and. This approach is not that strong. The work done by them is very limited.
As a company becomes a little more sensitive to the environmental issues, there it starts using the market approach and responds to the environmental needs of its customers. Anything environmental friendly asked by the customers, the organisation will try providing such products. On this approach DuPont produced a new kind of herbicide in the market that helped the framers all over the world, reducing the annual chemical used by about 45 million pounds. With the manufacturing these products, the company actually responded to the environmental needs of the farmers who all wanted to reduce the uses of chemical on the crops they harvested. You can call this a very good example of being socially responsive.
According to the stakeholder approach the organisations tries to meet environmental demand of several stakeholders like suppliers, employees and community and groups. For example, Hewlett- Packard comes with many corporate environmental campaigns in place for their product design, supply chain, product recycling & work operations.
But when an organisation is going through dark green approaches its main intuitive becomes saving the natural resources of the earth. This is also known as activist approach. This approach illustrates highest degree social responsibility & environmental sensitivity. For instance Belgian company produces eco-friendly cleaning goods in near zero emissions factories. The factory is made of huge roofs made of grasses that help keeping the factory warm in winters and cool in summers. Also a water related treatment is used to run on solar energy and on wind. Due to its commitment towards the environment this company has taken this initiative.
Evaluating Green Management Actions
When the business becomes “greener”, these companies’ releases details on their environment related actions and performances. There are about 1300 companies in the globe who are reporting their efforts daily basis promoting environment sustainability by the guidelines made by the GRI (Global reporting Initiative) regulations. www.globalreporting.org- this website will give you the details of the green actions initiated by these organisations.
There is other way that the companies show their commitments of being green by going through the standards that are developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization). In spite of ISO developing above 18000 international standard, it is well known for ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 standards. An organisation needs to develop a complete management system so as to become the ISO 14000 compliant. That is it has to reduce whatever effects their activities can have on nature and environment. It also needs to improve its performances related to environment improvement. When an organisation meets those standards it becomes an ISO14000 compliant. About 155 countries with organizations have achieved that.
One way is to evaluate organisation green actions by using the 100 list Global most sustainable organisations around the world. World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a renowned company has illustrated an extremely superior ability through which both social related factors and environmental factors can be managed at the same time. In 2010 United Kingdom has also led to the list of 21 Global hundred companies. The US followed with twelve, & both Canada and Australia have nine companies on this list. In 2010 list some companies were included such as Siemens (Germany), Westpac Banking, Corp Pearson PLC (U.K.), (Australia), EnCana Corp. (Canada), and Starbucks (U.S.).
Links of Previous Main Topic:-
- management and organizations a managers dilemma
- Understanding managements context constraints and challenges
- Managing in a global environment
- Managing diversity
- What is social responsibility
Links of Next Fundamentals of Management Topics:-
- Managers and their ethical behaviour
- Encouraging ethical behaviour
- Social responsibilities and ethical issues today world
- Case application 1 lessons from lehman brothers will we ever learn
- Case application 2 green up on aisle two
- Managing social responsibility and ethics
- Chapter 5 summary by learning outcomes
- Chapter 5 preparing for my career
- Managing change and innovation
- Managers as decision makers
- Foundations of planning
- Strategic management
- Basic organizational design
- Adaptive organizational design
- Managing human resources
