Ethics And Sustainability In The Workplace: Analysis And Application

Summary of the Scenario

A set of professional values and ethical values should be practiced by the individuals and industries to preserve the biodiversity of Mother Nature. A place like Lizard Resort can bring in a garbage problem on the beaches and other areas of an eco-system. The signs of over ambitiousness of the business owners and individuals can create a vicious circle to destroy the habitat designed by nature for the preservation of biodiversity.  In the current study with the help of the case of Lizard island resort, we will try to figure out a conceptual framework of the values to find an amicable solution to the problem where the interests of the three stakeholders, people, profit and planet can be served in the best possible ways.  

Read the Corporate Social Responsibility document of various resorts and other recreational facilities promoting the concept of Eco Tourism. The white paper on bio-diversity always gives us an idea that the establishment is fit for the preservation of natural biodiversity (Rice, 2018).  The case of Lizard Resort gives us an idea that alone construction facilities can change the ecological balance of an area. In the case of Lizard Island, we can see that it is a part of a national park. Here we need to understand the fact that the attack on the bio-diversity starts from the time when we start constructing something which is an amenity for the tourists, it lasts throughout because of the garbage created by the tourists, this garbage can release toxins for the sea for the sea animals (Yang, 2018).

A few years ago the concept of the eco-tourism rolled it, it was a nice concept because it was creating a win-win situation for the planet and the people, and profit, of course, and it was a sweet liaison between man and nature. Now the time has come when mother earth is in need of special protection, instead of creating guidelines the time has come that industries and individuals should come with ethical and professional values to protect the environment while making profits (Chung, 2018).

The case study of the Lizard Island located in Queensland can give us a fair idea about the interdependence of People, Profit, and a planet. This resort covers an area of almost one hectare and the primary features of biodiversity are animal, plants, sea, and Great Barrier Reef. The Stakeholder analysis chart of Lizard Island gives us an idea about this interdependence, this analysis clearly shows that if we can maintain nature well then it can serve as a key attention for the tourist. It can become the core competence for the business and add sustainability to it.

This prototype can be recreated for many more such facilities where nature, profit, and people can work in tandem. The stakes of each stakeholder are dependent on each other’s survival; an ethical framework can serve as the best answer for the sustenance of the system.

Primary/ Secondary	Who is effectivity involve in ethical	How are they impacted?	NEED	Their influence project	right	What is important to the stakeholder interest	Their action
Primary	Animal /plants	They going to be lost habitat	Provide the food and right environment to live	Different defend on city or country But the project will do medium	Ethical framework concern with the right approach and common good approach	Shareholder considers how to make benefit.	Move to find a new place or some wild animal attack on people
Primary	Human/ environment	The environment will be pollution due to development. A human being lost the natural.	Environment-friendly product use. Has a restriction on development and legislation.	The project will be influenced in the being strong human safety  and environment-friendly	The Utilitarian Approach	How to make a benefit and how can manage the business suitable.	It should try to use. Environment-friendly

Secondary

government

The government will spend a lot of money to recovery bio-diversity

They need policy and legislation.

Government control and cooperation to protect the bid diversity

The right approach

Stockholder has to obligated the law and concern to make a profit

Make a policy and legislation to protect the environment.

Soft value management among the stakeholders can bring in some hard and specified results to control the problem

The case of the Lizard Island Resort

Under the true spirit of People, profit and planet we can divide the stakeholders into three heads. The first primary stakeholders are plants and biodiversity. The second stakeholders in the process are human beings. When we have look at the secondary stakeholders then we find government acting as a regulatory body among the primary stakeholders. The roles and the positions of the stakeholders can be seen in the above-mentioned matrix where the roles and the responsibilities of each component are described in detail. This matrix also gives us the nature of the key problem; the key nature of the problem says that it is the utilitarian approach of human beings which is destroying the equilibrium of an ecosystem. According to the estimations of the thinkers like Quinn and Jones, an ethical framework can be the leveler among the stakeholders because it can dictate a righteous path of action by setting up right moral principles and righteous path of action for them.  

Think about a resort promoting the concept of eco-tourism while presenting an opportunity for the locals to earn a livelihood in an otherwise pristine but deserted area. In most of the cases these resort companies come up with ambitious corporate social responsibility plans, they also say that they will equip their facilities with the latest waste management techniques. It seems all right on the paper; up to some extent, it preserves the vicinity of their operational areas from becoming a garbage dumping ground (Huz, 2018). However, they forget that they are operating in a pristine land and the same garbage is depositing in a different part of the island or the land. The garbage present in the Pacific islands is a poignant example of this practice.

Soft value management can be an answer to this problem; it promotes a systematic thinking in the system ahead of the rules and guidelines. Rules and guidelines can solve structured problems where we are aware of the key result areas. Soft value management based practices are the best practices when we have an unstructured problem in our hands (Patterson, 2018).

The four moral principles guided by Quinn and Jones may have a great relevance in this case, The position matrix of the stakeholders gives us an idea that  a utilitarian approach is disobeying the principle of avoiding harm to each other, the same approach is also pushing the humans to kill the autonomy of the bio-diversity of the place. The concept of ecotourism writes an agreement between humans and biodiversity of the place. If humans will dishonor this agreement then the prospects of the sustainable touristic activity will diminish automatically (Houck, 2018). Soft Value management or the soft VM exercise promotes the concept of positive participation among the stakeholders. Here it is important to mention about the output of the Geneva summit of the world environment that took place in the year 2011, most of the countries participated in the convention agreed to the concerns of the environmentalists and others related to the loss in biodiversity and other issues (Martinco, 2018). However, the developing countries of the world like China and India refused to abide by certain recommendations on the issue by giving away the plea of the development. It is a complicated situation, the models created with the help of Soft value management has the potential to handle these complex situations because they can inflict an alternative system thinking to solve a problem (Chan, 2016).

Stakeholder analysis

In the case of Lizard island resort, Lets first think about the carrying capacity of the place and assume that the developers are well aware of this carrying capacity and they are not overboard about it. The agreement between humans and the environment of the area clearly implies that the developers of the resort should think about the carrying capacity of the place in accordance with the presence of the biodiversity in the area. They should identify some pockets where they should leave it unhampered. Bio-diversity should have a commanding presence in the buffer areas of the resorts where humans can interact with nature in a friendly environment; it is good for the local economy that needs a boost. It is also good for the creation of the infrastructure in that area (Berry, 2016).

Let’s go for a breakdown of the list of the stakeholders, a breakdown of the human component of the stakeholders gives us the list of three participants, they are owner and the management of the resort, the second stakeholders are the local people getting direct and indirect economic benefits from the operations (Kling, 2014). The third set of the stakeholders belongs to the tourists that are visiting the area. When we try to see it from the perspective of the creation of a system then we find that first two stakeholders are under the locus of control because they are getting direct benefits from the deal and the sustainability of the place is a big concern for them.  However, any system surrounding these two stakeholders cannot work well because they are not the root cause of the problem (Meier, 2014).

The root cause of the problem belongs to the tourists; they are the source behind the garbage. The Soft VM practices tell us to motivate tourists in a pleasant and positive way to be careful about the use of disposals and other things that can become garbage (Drutman, 2015). We discussed this simple case for the purpose of a better understanding of the issue, however, the scope of this approach and the concept of soft VM can be utilized in macro-environmental concerns as well. (Richardson, 2014).

This breakdown of the stakeholders gives us another framework to think about the biodiversity and the role of the stakeholders in the case of Lizard Island Resort.

Stake Holder Designation/ Role	Impact	Influence	Why it is important for the stakeholder	How could the stakeholder block the project	Strategy to engage the stakeholder
The Resort as a business entity in the area.	Increase in the spectrum of the economic multiplier	On the infrastructure of the place.	Profit	By banning the expansion plans or discontinuing the operations	Profit and sustainability in the business
Local workforce and other business supporting operations, like suppliers, vendors etc.	The gain of the employment and livelihood	Business activity will support the infrastructure and bring in development	Livelihood	By opposing the operations of the resorts for N number of reasons.	Livelihood, and better living standards
Nature and Biodiversity	Protection because they have become they are the core competence of the business.	Sustainability in the natural habitat of the animals, good for the biodiversity of the place.	Sustenance of the business	Greed and distortion of nature for the sake of short-term profits	Sustenance of nature alongside the profit for the locals and other stakeholders
Government sector	Direct revenue from the operations and responsibility sharing	Sharing of the burden of development with the private sector	Sustenance of the people and the tasks of the welfare for the local population.	Can launch welfare schemes and other HR services in the area.	Can come up with some laws to create a balance.

 In the above diagram, we can see the division of the stakeholders based on the operational intricacies. This matrix establishes a complex interdependence of operational stakeholders. A culture of reporting and checklists can also be introduced among them (Cole, 2014).  This culture can give us an idea about the best practice associated with the smooth operations of the events among the various fractions of the touristic and economic activity introduction of the best practices can make it a sustainable affair for the all the parties that are involved.

The concept of the best practice should be seen from the lens view of the Soft VM system. As a human we cannot afford to live like the humans that were living in the Stone Age, we need comfort, we need amenities to live. We can control the ticking of the population bomb; however, we cannot deny a natural increase in the population as well (Kessler, 2010).

The problem of the extinction of the biodiversity around the areas of operation near the Lizard resort can be solved with the help of Soft VM approach, we can apply three alternatives and each alternative fixes a different role that corresponds to the three P’s of environmental concern, these three P’s are people, planet and profit.  

1. Government sector can come up with taxation planning against the use of non-biodegradable plastic options. A restoration drive to clean the beaches can be administered with the help of the tax that governments will gain.
2. The concept of the Eco-tourism can hit two birds from a single stone. Since it is a place designed for the eco-tourism, the maintenance of the biodiversity of the place will become an added responsibility for the promoters of the business. It will add sustainability to the resort and the destination because bio-diversity in its natural habitat will become the unique sales point of the destination. In order to maintain it, the owners can restrict certain practices of the tourists.  
3. Creation of a buffer zone can be another solution. It has been seen that creation of the buffer zone only attracts hardcore nature lovers to a certain area, this practice is bringing in great results for the wildlife sanctuaries, now the same practice can be useful in the cases of the beaches that are suffering from certain problems connected to waste management and others.

The approach of Soft Value management has the potential to address three different complexities present in the system.

1. It is true that individuals are doing their bit to solve the problems related to the environment in specific areas. However, with the Soft VM approach, their efforts can be institutionalized and directed towards a better and sustainable future.
2. The monitoring is another issue; the introduction of the best practices for the environment and profits can hold the keys here. After the identification of the best practices, the government sector can come up with specific guidelines for the sustainability of the operations.
3. System thinking in the form of People, profit and planet are already in place. This concept should be introduced more aggressively while addressing various parts of the problems connected to the protection of the biodiversity of the area.

Conclusion

The waste management and the reclamation of the beaches under the name of tourist resorts are two big problems that beaches across the world are facing. Many experts believe that it is happening because of an increase in the population. Every human being is in love with the Mother Nature, they are trying at an individual level to preserve it, and however, the grand sum of their efforts versus the grand sum of their activities against the environment is big. In order to meet this problematic situation, a soft value management approach can be the best solution to address the problems in parts and search out for some solutions. In the current study, we came up with two separate stakeholder analysis of the stakeholder. The first analysis was based on the positions commanded by the policies and moral codes. The second analysis commands the position gained by the operational responsibilities and the powers.  Both this analysis clearly tells us that the problem of the extinction of the biodiversity can be solved with the help of VM approaches and practices governed under the ethical frameworks dedicated to the interests of all the stakeholders.  

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