Global Environment, Marketing And Sustainability: A Comprehensive Review

The Challenges of Global Sustainability

Discuss about the Global Environment And Marketing Sustainability.

This chapter includes a wide area of discussion on global environment. The population of the entire world has increased in the recent years. With the passing years it continues to increase. By the year 2050 it is expected to increase by 9.5 billion. This is the reason the global resources that are used by the people are getting limited and it affects the sustainability of the products. The world faces the biggest sustainability challenge. The global sustainability can be traced back to the post world war 2. The western countries went through the process of economic development. The limitations of the resources were not considered to be important. However in the later years the scenario started changing. There were two recognized wave of environmentalism; these were called the first wave and the second wave. The Brundtland report presented the fact that the economic development and the environmental sustainability are necessary for each other. It was recognized that in the developing countries the poor people exploited the land and the forests. The environmental sustainability is not restricted to the luxury nations. It can be seen as a scope in the poor nations as well. There was certain mapping approach towards the environmental sustainability. This approach is the treadmill approach. According to, Holden, Linnerud & Banister (2017) this does not accept the need for a shift towards more environmentally sustainable forms of development. The advocates of the approach, argues the fact that the environmentalists sometimes occur to be more dramatic in their approach towards the environment. The different factors have been taken into consideration regarding the sustainability of the global environment. The different implications of the climate change have been taken into account in this case. The biodiversity is another factor that is to be considered in this light. It is highly related with the climate change. The different types of knowledge which I gained was totally new to me and it was a memorable one as I will cherish it forever. My colleagues were supportive enough and helped me to learn the sustainability challenges of the modern world.

This chapter is concentrated on the concept of marketing and sustainability. This chapter outlines the basic principles of marketing. This offers critical access the demand of the market for sustainable goods and sustainable services. The position of the stakeholders has been kept in mind in this and the idea of social marketing has been done in the same. The major challenges that are related to marketing and sustainability are it changes the lifestyle, the behavior and the consumption. The studies which I read shown me that it is tough to grow awareness among the consumers and make them aware of the issues related to the sustainability. There is a link between the concept of consumption of the product, the production and the marketing. The production is directly related to the demands of the consumers (Le Blanc, 2015). The companies produce the goods in order to meet the demands of the consumers. I also experienced that there are many people who confuse the term marketing with many other concepts like advertising, sales or promotion of products. There are three main concepts of marketing; they are target markets, marketing strategy and marketing mix. The sustainable consumer behavior depends on four factors, awareness, acceptance, ability and action. It is important to understand the demands of the stakeholders in order to have a sustainable business. This includes the survey that should be conducted on the opinion of the public. It covers the awareness and the acceptance of the environmental aspects of sustainability. This also includes the level of public awareness. This chapter explains the principles of effective social marketing. An effective marketing strategy will enable to attract the stakeholders and to grow a sustainable market (Barkemeyer et al., 2014).

Principles of Marketing for Sustainability

The chapter deals with the sustainability accounting and reporting. There are many carriers of the rapid global transformation with the changing expectations. The examples of this are the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spills. This has created a need for greater transparency in accounting for sustainability. The chapter presents a difference between the sustainability accounting and traditional accounting. The concept of financial accounting can be taken into account in this respect. This includes the recognition and seeking to mitigate the negative effects of the conventional accounting practices. It identifies the related costs and revenues that is identified within the conventional system of accounting. There are some possible reasons for this. According to, Charles Jr, Schmidheiny and Watts (2017) some environmental costs are usually overlooked or they are concealed in the overhead accounts. The environment costs should be identified in order to have a significant cost of elimination. This leads to the better management of the costs of the environment which in turn affects the human health and the improvement in the environmental performance. On contrary, Carley and Christie (2017) has the idea that the sustainability accounting and the global reporting initiative (GRI) has worked hard on the identifying the potential through the ability to influence the attitudes of the management. I thought the other thing and was totally taken back after coming to know the following fact. This can be better understood by the conflicts between the society, organizations and the efficient markets. Australian Supermarket ALDI is one of the best examples of a sustainable success story. The presence of large number of different alternative brands and the presence of a number of different low cost items has worked wonders for the company as customers have embraced ALDI as their family. Thus the mentioned company has shown the world on how to attain sustainable measures and work towards development.

According to latest news published by the Guardian, a survey report has shown that Adelaide has surpassed Sydney to become the greenest city of Australia. A number of considerations regarding the same has made the city as the greenest in Australia (www.theguardian.com 2018).

This chapter consists of the organizational strategy. The chapter identifies the four generic levels of strategy. The chapter describes the meaning of sustainable world. A sustainable world consists of the world that is concerned with the emergent of the life on Earth over an indefinite time frame that incorporates human and ecological wellbeing. This is better understood with the help of reformist and the transformational approach. The former approach argues the fact that the economic system is dominant all over. The dominant social and economic system is one of the continuous economic growths that encompass the free trade. It is because of globalization that the multinational business is possible to grow. The emphasis has been laid on the technological advancements and the progress of the well-being of the human. This is possible because of the increased level of consumption as well as the income. This is important to have a growth of the economy in order to overcome the poverty and to promote the general wellbeing of the humans. According to, Bendell (2017) the improvement in the technological advancements is in order to increase the efficiency. The challenge is to pursue the human development through the continued economic growth and the technological advancement. I and my fellow colleagues saw that the transformational approach argues that humans are the best means to make progress through consumptive sufficiency and it includes a focus on the well-being through the life experiences. According to this approach, the poverty can be resolved through the collection of the resources. Therefore it can be summed up by concluding that the strategy can be termed as strategic only when the resources can be used efficiently. A famous example can be cited to the failure of companies in the absence of proper organizational strategies. The case of both Nokia and Kodak suits the best in this role. Pearce (2014) defines that their definition of the business in a narrow way, lack of attention to the choice of the customer and their slow pace of growth led to their organizational failure. Thus a suitable strategy formulation is utmost necessary for the survival of the business.

Sustainability Accounting and Reporting

This chapter includes the economics of sustainable development. This explains the meaning of sustainable development. It analyzes the ecological and the economic limits to growth. It includes the fact that there are numerous number of alternative development indicators of sustainability. As stated by Schwartz (2017) sustainable development intends to sustain the process of human betterment. The emphasis is laid on the three crucial factors; those are the quality of the human life and not just the material standard of living. It includes the welfare of the people across the globe. It is necessary to preserve the environment upon which the human activity depends. In order to have a strong sustainability it is required to maintain the rate of extraction of the renewable resources. It should be kept in mind that the rate of the waste should not exceed the capacity of assimilation of the environment. This might lead to the exploitation of the resources, which is harmful for the environment and this is the reason it should be limited to the areas that is already modified. The genuine progress indicator is designed to measure the welfare that is generated by the growing economy. It is due to this reason that there are certain business implications that are likely to arise from the reorienting the economy towards the sustainable development that includes, the improvement of the quality of the product. It includes the efficiency of the production and selling more output. Bendell (2017) has cited the example of Westpac as one of the most sustainable corporations of the world. There are a number of reasons behind such a recognition which includes;

1. Employee engagement at its highest level
2. Flexible work arrangement
3. Clean technology and environment services
4. Investment in different products and advisory services.

This includes the factors related to the sustainable models. This chapter opines the contribution of the industrial ecology to the sustainable business. There are four sustainable business models; they are industrial ecology, the natural capitalism, the cradle to cradle design and the natural step. As stated by Pearce (2014), the natural resources are extracted from the earth which is called the minerals. They are grown which is the part of the agriculture. It is used as the materials. It also consists if the fossil fuels, which is the minerals, oil, gas and the uranium. The energy that is extracted from the fossil fuels converts the natural resources into the finished products that are essential products like the food, shelter and the medicine. The luxury items include the cake, luxury cars and costly foods etc. The humans end up in discarding the products in landfills or waterways at the end of their useful life. There are however, many challenges in implementing the industrial ecosystems. These include locating the compatible tenants within the networks of the industry. Wheeler & Beatley, (2014) states that the following includes the commercial viability and also has the risk of creating the innovation. It has the barriers that is market based and apart from that it has regulatory barriers. It is a matter of fact that the matter of the sustainability can be better understood with the help of the cradle to cradle design, the natural step model of sustainability. Le Blanc (2015) states that waterless car washing can be an ideal way to reduce the wastage of water. It allows the car dealer to service cars in a small place and save adequate water.

Organizational Strategies for a Sustainable World

From this chapter I learned the idea of carbon management. This chapter identifies the major source of carbon emissions in Australia. It further describes a systematic approach to the reduction of the carbon footprint of an organization. It evaluates the sustainability of the climate management options. The waste is ultimately created. According to, Tricker & Tricker (2015) the global economy is related to the emissions of the carbon and that has a direct impact on the climate change. In order to make the environment sustainable the carbon-emitting activities can be replaced with the non-carbon activities. This can be mentioned as carbon mitigation. Australia is ranked at the highest category of greenhouse emission. The consumption of fossil fuel in the country is 95%, the consumption of the renewable resources is 5%. It is the responsibility of the customers to understand the responsibility of the harmful effects that are occurred due to the carbon emission. All of us including the colleagues from other departments learned a good deal about the particular percentage of the consumption of the fuels and was amazed to hear the wastage and lack of awareness to save the fuels. There are many customers who fail to understand the change that occurs in the climate. They do not understand the influence of the same on the business production systems. The effective way to eradicate this is to analyze the carbon footprint model, the climate risk and the opportunities related to the same can be analyzed. The humans should shift their focus on the use of the renewable sources of energy. However the emission of carbon can be reduced by following a systematic approach. On the other hand Schwartz (2017) the systematic approach can be followed to reduce the carbon footprint of the organization. An effective evaluation of the sustainability of climate management should be made. The use of sodium batteries in cars in place of Lithium batteries is another example of sustainable development. The European Union has already formulated plans to build a battery making consortium to compete with the lithium ion market leaders of the business. The new sustainable change will help in developing a green world. The following has been highlighted in the class.

The chapter concentrates on the business ethics, corporate governance and the corporate social responsibility. The chapter discusses the key features of an ethical business. It identifies the principle of good governance and different elements of the corporate social responsibility. Business ethics is the application of the general ethical ideas to the behavior of business. According to, Carroll (2015) under this context this can be identified that society should maintain the responsibility to save the environment. It will upgrade the reputation of the people. Better ethics leads to better reputation which in turn leads to competitive advantage and profit. The principles of good governance is transparency, rule of law, participation, responsibility, equity and fairness, this further include the efficiency and effectiveness, sustainability and accountability. On the other hand, Tai & Chuang, (2014) states that the inclusive factors of corporate social responsibility are the response to social expectations, it adds social goods as a business goal, and it defines the ability to apply strategies across all aspects of the business. It initiates the individuals to think in a different way about the role of business in the society. The BMW group understands sustainability from the supplier through production to recycling. Though the company produces a large volume of diesel cars, it has expressed its decision to fit electric operating platforms in all the cars it produces from the year 2019 and has also expressed its desire to ultimately stop the production of diesel cars in the coming years.

References

Barkemeyer, R., Holt, D., Preuss, L., & Tsang, S. (2014). What happened to the ‘development’in sustainable development? Business guidelines two decades after Brundtland. sustainable development, 22(1), 15-32.

Bendell, J. (2017). Terms for endearment: Business, NGOs and sustainable development. Routledge.

Carley, M., & Christie, I. (2017). Managing sustainable development. Routledge.

Carroll, A. B. (2015). Corporate social responsibility. Organizational dynamics, 44(2), 87-96.

Charles Jr, O. H., Schmidheiny, S., & Watts, P. (2017). Walking the talk: The business case for sustainable development. Routledge.

Dodd, E. M. (2017). For whom are corporate managers trustees?. In Corporate Governance (pp. 29-47). Gower.

Holden, E., Linnerud, K., & Banister, D. (2017). The imperatives of sustainable development. Sustainable Development, 25(3), 213-226.

Kane, A. (2018). Australia’s greenest city: Adelaide pulls ahead of Sydney and Melbourne. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/12/australias-greenest-city-adelaide-pulls-ahead-of-sydney-and-melbourne [Accessed 21 May 2018].

Le Blanc, D. (2015). Towards integration at last? The sustainable development goals as a network of targets. Sustainable Development, 23(3), 176-187.

Pearce, D. (2014). Blueprint 3: Measuring sustainable development. Routledge.

Schwartz, M. S. (2017). Corporate social responsibility. Routledge.

Tai, F. M., & Chuang, S. H. (2014). Corporate social responsibility. Ibusiness, 6(03), 117.

Tricker, R. B., & Tricker, R. I. (2015). Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and practices. Oxford University Press, USA.

Wheeler, S. M., & Beatley, T. (Eds.). (2014). Sustainable urban development reader. Routledge.