The Key For Success Is Sustainability

Sustainability has become a relevant word in the vocabulary of many organizations, governments and individuals. More than just a word, sustainability relates to the ability of institutions to continue executing their functions without forgetting the effects on the environment and taking into consideration the fair treatment of their employees and the human rights of society. Although sustainability is a widely used term by many individuals, the understanding of this term is not as clear as its popularity. When discussing the ideas of sustainability, most people automatically associate the term with the human impact on the environment. Others relate sustainability to the ability to cut costs and inefficiencies within the organization. A few individuals believe that sustainability is a matter of human rights. So what exactly is sustainability?

Sustainability from a strategic business perspective is the potential for the long-term well-being of the natural environment, including all biological entities, as mutually beneficial interactions among nature and individuals, organizations, and business strategies. (O.C Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2015). Business sustainably is often defined as managing the triple bottom line – a process by which companies manage their financial, social and environmental risks, obligations and opportunities. These three impacts are sometimes referred to as profits, people and planet. (Business sustainability definition from financial times lexicon, no date). This essay will discuss the idea of sustainability being an important element within a businesses and its core strategies and the importance of it within different businesses. Secondly, this study will look at how different stakeholders are affected and influenced by sustainability as this could be seen as a catalyst to improving the environment as a whole and. Then this study will look at how businesses not focusing

The most commonly used definition of sustainable development is still that given in the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), i.e. sustainable development is ‘a process to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Sustainable development is therefore about creating a better life for all people in ways that will be as viable in the future as they are at present. In other words, sustainable development is based on principles of sound husbandry of the world’s resources, and on equity in the way those resources are used and in the way in which the benefits obtained from them are distributed (Making Tourism More Sustainable, 2005).

Sustainability is defined as the ability to endure.(1) Though the idea of sustainability can be applied to most anything from a sustainable ecosystem that has survived thousands of years to a sustainable workplace that uses green technologies. Paul Hawken captured today’s connotation of sustainability in saying “Sustainability is about stabilizing the currently disruptive relationship between earth’s two most complex systems—human culture and the living world.” (2) There are countless ways to live, work, and produce sustainably. Sustainability not only needs to be practiced by citizens, but businesses need to join the green movement as well. Without creating, following, and enforcing green policies, negative effects will be evident and innumerable

Sustainable development is defined as “Development that meets the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (IISD, par. 1 ).

The definition of sustainability varies widely depending on the context in which the concept of sustainability is used. As Herman Daly (1996) put it, “Sustainable development is a term that everyone likes, but nobody is sure of what it means. The term rose to the prominence of a mantra after the publication of the UN sponsored Brundtland Commission report entitled, Our Common Future.” The Brudndtland Commision (1987) that Daly was referring to defined the term as “development that meets the needs of the present

Sustainable development means that the present generations should be able to make use of resources to live better lives in such a manner that it does not compromise the ability of future generations. For sustainable development to occur, there needs to be sustainable economic, ecological and community development. Society needs to be educated about ways in which they can use resources, especially natural, in such a manner that it does not cause harm to the environment and put future generations lives at risk.

Sustainable development is the improvement that addresses the issues of the present without bargaining the capacity of future eras to address their own issues. It consists of two key ideas:

The word sustainability has been defined ‘as the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs’ (Mansdorf, 2010).

In today’s business world, sustainability can make all the difference in the world. According to Tomson (2015), “sustainability has become an economic and strategic imperative with the potential to create opportunities and risks for businesses by creating new customer relationships, and inspiring new products and business models that drive growth. Consequently, companies that are, or aspire to be, leaders in sustainability are often challenged by rising public expectations, increasing technological innovation, continuous quality improvement, effective governance measures, high standards of ethics and integrity, and heightened social and environmental challenges” (p.1).

Sustainable development is the key to a brighter future with less waste production. Sustainable development involves three major sectors, social, economical and environmental. When considering these aspects separate, we can see that solution to a problem creating another. For example when creating affordable housing outside of city away from workplaces, it results in increased traffic and pollution that comes with it. Environmentalists win it seriously affects the economy and with that businesses related to that industry. From this we can see that everything is connected in one way or the other.

Sustainable development is about meeting the needs of today without over-using the resources for future. It requires the integration of environmental, economic and social priorities into policies and programs[b]. It is different from green growth as green growth does not take social priorities into account which means that green growth is more focusing on improvement of quantity but sustainable development focusing more on quality of human’s life experience.

Sustainable development in a business, although a widely used phrase and idea, has many different meanings and therefore provokes many different responses. Although managing the economic bottom line and protecting social and environment resources is an important aspect of sustainability, it is not the only aspect. For example, sustainability refers greatly to an accounting framework with three parts: social, environment and financial. Commonly known as the Triple Bottom Line. One business that aims to achieve this concept is Cascade Engineering. The CEO, Mark Miller (2014) considers “the concept of sustainability as the three interconnected gears in motion”. Each category is an interdependent, innovation-enabling mechanism. Sustainability has been an often mentioned goal of business, non-profits and governments in the past decade, yet measuring the degree to which an organization is being sustainable or pursuing sustainable growth can be difficult. In broad terms, sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio-economic issues.

Urbanization, which is becoming a buzzword during the last few decades, is enlarging at a booming speed. It is predicted that 93 percents urban growth will occur to the year 2020, in the developing world (Elliot J.A, 1999). Generally speaking, more than half of the people around the world have been moved to cities, which led to a series of “matters” connected with people’s life that changed in a dramatical way. In this period, sustainable development, another buzzword during the past few years, came into people’s view and gradually became the mainstream of society development. Its definition is to make the development continue in a long term, which means allowing appropriate economic growth and industrialization without

The concept of sustainable development has become a major topic among intellectuals from various fields. Sustainable development has gone through various changes in its definitions and at present does not have a commonly accepted definition. The origination of the concept of sustainable development is debatable. In 1974 at a conference on Science and Technology for Human Development by the World Council of Churches the concept of a “sustainable society” is believed to have been first noted. This early concept focused on equitable distribution of scarce resources and the need for democratic decision making. In 1980 the currently used term of sustainable development emerged in the