Can organisations achieve sustainable practices without human sustainability?

IINDIVIDUAL ORAL PRESENTATION 1

Can organisations achieve sustainable practices without human sustainability? Can organisations that are proactive on sustainability achieve a competitive advantage? How?

The twenty-first century is facing a new challenge as other centuries have faced. This challenge is sustainability. The world’s population is growing at an alarming rate of about 1.14% annually. The world this needs to devise mechanisms and systems to sustain this growth while at the same time protecting the environment. This problem is the same dilemma facing corporations and enterprises. Corporations and enterprises are at the center point of the world’s economy. If these corporations can find a guiding path towards sustainability, then the world by extension will achieve sustainability. Since corporations are inextricably linked to human resource, it is impossible for organizations to achieve sustainable practices without human sustainability.

There are two broad forms of democracy that drive world’s economy. One is the “The New Right” and the other is social democracy. In the first democracy, governments allow a free market environment where the main goal of corporations is profit making. In the second approach, governments institute legislations to control and regulate corporations’ activities. Proactive organizations on sustainability fall mostly under the second approach. These organizations can achieve competitive advantage as the system in which they operate prevents unethical practices and assists in protecting the environment, as well as the resources. Corporations that exist in the first system are at a risk of collapse due to unhealthy completion and depletion of resources due to unethical business practices.
It is, therefore, important that governments institute legislations to guide the path towards which corporations should operate rather than allow a state of a complete free market. In an ideal situation, corporations would prefer operating in an uncontrolled environment. However, adopting a non-interventionist approach poses a danger towards sustainability.

IINDIVIDUAL ORAL PRESENTATION 2

To what extent is organizational Change Sustainable Practices Dependent upon Human Sustainability Factors? Are Views of Employees different from Managers and Stakeholders?

In the perspective of Benn & Dunphy, human sustainability factors encompass issues such as: Political facets, social facets, economic, environment, goals and interests, technology as well as stakeholder relationship, collaboration and economic-incentives. In the context or of organizations, these issues have a significant impact as they facilitate how organizations plan and implement their activities for example: Benn & Dunphy 2004, argue that political systems usually engage in the formulation of legal frameworks and provide incentives to organizations to assist them shift towards sustainable modes of production.
Organization sustainability is also defined as the extent to which an enterprise aligns its needs and interest with its most crucial assets and workforce to ensure that they can attain the highest level of success. As such, the alignment of the two issues aforementioned is considered a factor of human sustainability. In this regard, organizations can achieve a high level of sustainable performance and success, depending on how it aligns its interests and needs with its workforce and needs.
Yes. The views of these three organizational entities are different. Viv Read asserts in her discussion that the success of any organization depends of human sustainability. This dimension of sustainability can only be achieved when an organization aligns the needs and the views of its management, employees and stakeholders with the needs of the business. This is an indication that indeed the views of employees and managers as well as stakeholders are different. In most cases, managers are responsible for creating organizational goals and objectives, while employees, mainly perceived as human resources, are basically meant to adhere and implement the objectives.