Organizations have a unique path, that grows, changes and that is the foundation of their experience; they perform their activities in a particular context in which they interact and are modified and transformed, as well as modify and transfer to their context the impacts of their activity.
Author Winston Jerónimo Silvestre | Reading time 3 minutes
By this, companies, through their actions as active subjects, carry out changes that affect the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their context. Hence, on the one hand, we have consumers and a whole range of different stakeholders who are constantly seeking to maximize their utility and, on the other, the company that wants to efficiently reach the best combination of work and resources.
It is this dynamic that companies generate a multitude of impacts. Their intensity is directly related to the activity sector to which they belong, depending on the life cycle of their products and services, supply chain, relationship with different stakeholders and their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Several approaches report that we are witnessing a change in business paradigm in recent years and we need to be aware of the key economic, social and environmental challenges that will have to be addressed. The main challenge is to decide which actions and initiatives should companies choose to meet sustainability challenges.
Companies that choose to take on the sustainability challenge often get tangible and intangible benefits that translate into economic improvements are more emotionally attractive to work with, more attractive to investors, high reputation and governance as well as high levels of product quality, innovation, social and environmental ethics.
However, and although there is an increase on the part of companies to opt for sustainable behavior (micro-level) studies show that the general state of our planet (macro level) is worrying. Thus, the improvement that needs to be made at a global level is not only dependent on companies, but on concerted and broad action that includes all stakeholders.
This discrepancy between micro and macro scale may be related to the fact that the impacts caused by companies are not being correctly assessed. Some authors report that there is neither the best way nor the only way to measure corporate sustainability activities.
Therefore, the CSR debate is shifting from making commitments to how to execute, maintain, improve CSR practices and how to assess their impact and outcomes. That is, how to incorporate the principles of sustainability into strategic planning, what is the capacity for know-how to redefine growth at any given moment, the ability to create market opportunities, the implementation of new ways of using and reusing resources, what form should use to relate and integrate different stakeholders, what to measure and how to measure to monitor and evaluate their results, what communication channels to use to advertise their intentions, proposals, and results while creating shared value.
In this sense three aspects are interrelated and should be taken into account:
- The first aspect has to do with the need for a systematic and planned approach;
- The second aspect is CSR measurement and evaluation to ensure that business processes are regularly monitored and evaluated;
- The third aspect concerns communication initiatives to stakeholders.
However, the business theory continues to exist, whether in conventional economics or approaches that are close to the principles of sustainable economics, a common denominator that is the obligation of the company to generate income.
Thus, it is critical that companies take bold action on the environmental and social dimensions, as genuine sustainability is at the level of well-being created today and for the future. This task is not easy and involves a multitude of variables and constraints that are difficult to determine and control, but it will have to be done.
But companies are not all in the same context or operational maturity. So, it will be more or less sustainable and socially responsible if it shows the ability to proactively adapt to different environments, whose main characteristic is that they are constantly changing.
The presence or absence of value created by the performance of the company's activities will reflect on resource sharing for the triple bottom line (TBL) dimensions, and this will positively or negatively influence the performance of its business sustainability. Thus, the result of combinations of different factors in the TBL dimensions will give rise to opportunities for operational improvements implying adaptive capacity for sustainability, and this adaptive capacity will depend on the company and the sector of activity.
