The Sustainability Of An Organization Through Public Relations

When talking about sustainability numerous people associate it with just protecting the environment. Sustainability is far more than going green, but it is a principle that many companies have adopted and have worked persistently to improve over the last several years. Sustainability is defined as the ability to continue a behavior indeterminately, but it also includes improving human life overall. Sustainable development is broken down into three pillars: economic, social, and environmental (Harich & Bangerter, 2014). Economics is the study of how people use resources, which correlates to the goal of sustainable development by using resources to their full potential (Laszlo, C., & Zhexembayeva, N., 2011, p. 60). Economic sustainable development allows companies to give their customers what they want without overusing mutual resources. Social development combines the social world with the physical realm to provide a good quality of life (Benoit, 2010, p. 7). Social sustainability focuses on the well-being of people and their communities. Environmental development, the most recognizable, includes protecting the environment by reducing pollution, recycling, switching of electronic devices when not in use, etc. All three of these pillars make up what is known as sustainable development. In this paper, I researched a company and their involvement in sustainability and how it applies to the

In today’s world for any business to be successful it needs to be a sustainable enterprise. There are a number of ways to achieve sustainability using a number of different methods. A key aspect of sustainability for any business is Stakeholder Engagement. Only by reaching out to all of their stakeholders will a business be able to create a competitive advantage while still being sustainable.

The Dannon Company is a story of company that did not know what to do with itself. The company wanted to promote its corporate social responsibility (CSR), but did not know how or where to do so. Question arose on whether or not the company wanted to promote CSR communications. Dannon 's management team was at a precipice, but how should the company get across? Michael Neuwirth, senior director of public relations for Dannon, was considering what part the company 's CSR could act, if any, in the company 's advancement (Marquis et al, 2011). This paper 's intention is to analyze both the benefits and risks of communicating Dannon 's CSR to the public forum on a larger scale, as well as the role of the parent company, Danone. Additionally, this paper will suggest a communication strategy which, I would propose, would fall in line with the company 's vision and history of CSR.

Stakeholders will generally detect duplicity in CSR motives; intrinsic or genuine motives as well as extrinsic profit-related motives; however, stakeholders will be tolerant of clear extrinsic motives, if the CSR initiatives are rooted in intrinsic values. This leads to the perceived “win-win” scenario, and is one of the driving factors behind company CSR initiatives, as they realize the value of helping society while still being able to focus on the impact to the bottom line (Tonello, 2011). In addition, if campaigns are not communicated specifically around the brands it produces, then a “halo effect” for the entire industry could be the end result, of a poorly executed communication strategy (Marquis et al., 2011) Therefore, it is important for Dannon to construct a carefully balanced communication strategy, which considers the perception of its stakeholders in the marketplace, while also ensuring to highlight the specific impact of its CSR initiatives within the communities it operates.

As we have seen an increase in awareness around sustainability and climate change, with the help of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary in 2006, we see organizations moving towards mitigating the effects of climate change in various ways (Al Gore, n.d). As this corporate social responsibility has become more prevalent, organizations are now pushing their green agenda by publishing sustainability reports, doing mass marketing and implementing sustainable business practices to portray the image that they too are working towards protecting the earth’s natural environment all the while focusing on their underlying goal of selling their products and

Sustainability has achieved a more ecological tone in the past few decades in terms of a business model, but it originally derives from the concept that a business is successful due to the interconnected areas of economics, culture and ecology. Sustainability is now becoming a somewhat fad and thus it is understandable that it could be misconstrued by some as a form of “greenwashing”. Greenwashing is the idea that a company markets their “green” or environmentally friendly changes in policy and values, despite no actual concrete changes in these areas, for example some argue that Fiji Water greenwasher in terms of their marketing as an environmentally friendly water company despite their little effort to actually go carbon-neutral. Many companies are seeing the

Companies today are heavily influenced by the demands of customers and stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the social and environmental responsibility policies and practices developed by an organization to increase its positive influence and reduce its negative activity towards society (Parks, 2008). The business approach and corporate philosophy of an organization is easily altered due to economic pressures, technological improvement and stakeholder needs and demands. "Going green" or being eco-friendly is one such demand. Environmental and sustainability concerns originate most often from governments, consumer activists, and the general public (Schlosser, 2008). Thus, organizations must implement sustainability into daily practices. In addition, sustainability alters the nature of competition and drives companies to think differently about products, processes, and technologies (Parks, 2008).

While navigating the geographical factors and location for an international business in Brazil, a conceptual model for corporate sustainability is offered in the article, “Integrating sustainability into business practices: learning from Brazilian firms," Petrini and Pozzebon (2010) list the influential factors of three categories: corporate view, organizational structure, and organizational mechanisms that organization must contend with. On the global side of corporate sustainability is the prevalent theme of corporate social responsibility, or CSR. CSR and sustainability both take into account environmental, social, and economic dimensions to effectively sustain the corporation into future endeavors; CSR proponents, whether they be industrial, scientific, or environmental, understand the increased sales and profits identified with this theme, but now the sustainability and development of the business itself are also being seen through the eyes of CSR (Petrini & Pozzebon, 2010). The corporate view from the top needs to develop an organizational structure to allow implementation of a set of organizational mechanisms that will legitimize and consolidate the integration of sustainability; the authors also point to the leadership in the corporation providing a clear definition of sustainability’s role within the firm, and recommend that a system of recognition and valorization of sustainable practices and initiatives needs to come from the

Sustainability reporting in the United States is still a work in progress. While more countries around the world are requiring companies to report the effects of their business activities as part of their annual report, this practice is still voluntary in the US. Even though sustainability reporting is not required, companies generally disclose sustainable information on their websites or through social media. Being social responsible builds a certain type of bond that brings internal and external stakeholders together.

Sustainability reporting has become increasingly prevalent in organizations of all types and sizes. A company or organization’s sustainability report is a published report that details the economic, environmental and social impacts that are a direct result of their daily activities. These reports also depict the organization’s

In the first scenario we were asked to map ten key stakeholder and write a persuasive letter to the Board of Directors to explain why public relations is beneficial to the company. For this scenario we used Stakeholder theory which consists of 4 different types of stakeholder these are “Enabling: those with the power and authority to make decisions, Functional: the people who make the organisation work, Normative: those who share values with the organisation in crisis and Diffused: those linked

Today, the general publics which turns to social media in every step to learn about company’s social involvement and use social media as a tool to address or engage with the company. In this interconnected world, a company cannot afford to ignore their social responsibilities. It had proved time and again, any missteps a company makes in the social media can prove to be a publicity nightmare from which it can barely come out unharmed. Just 10 years ago, only a handful of the fortune 500 companies paid any attention to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, now “More than 8,000 businesses around the world

Therefore, corporate’ activities have strong influences to the stakeholders. Hildebrand,D,et,al (2011) argued that under a specific but identifiable situation, a company’s CSR actions are able to satisfy stakeholders’ higher-order and self-related demand, meanwhile enabling the stakeholders to identify with the company. On the other hand, Piercy, N. and Lane, N.(2009) indicated that CSR seems to be the most efficient way for the corporate marketing efforts of most firms. It may enable the stakeholders to be loyal even life-long customers of the companies.

The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.

In order for a company to thrive in today’s world, a company must maintain a good relationship with their stakeholders. Having a good relationship with stakeholders means that the company will be able to operate as expected. A bad relationship with stakeholders leads to a large gap between the way the company is expected to be doing, opposed to the way it actually is doing. For this reason, companies like Apple, Starbucks, and Lego have found ways to integrate their stakeholder’s and keep them more involved.