Sustainable development has become a buzzword in most organizations. Most organizations try to achieve sustainable development through the use of many models and theories. Sustainable development and sustainability can be of immense benefit to the organization, since it can greatly impact the way that the public looks at the organization (Fostervold, Koren & Nilsen, 2018). By being sustainable, an organization can get a better public image. It can increase the benefits that they can get, such as tax cuts from the government and can have a significant impact on the general public as well.
The following looks at the Quadruple Bottom Line, and each element of the Quadruple Bottom Line model. It looks at how prioritising stakeholders over shareholders can benefit the organization by having improved sustainability and performance. It also looks at two tourism companies in New Zealand, and how they can benefit from the Quadruple Bottom Line. The final part looks at two key roles that leadership and management has in achieving sustainable development goals.
Sustainable prosperity is a result of sustainable development, and one that enables human beings to survive after their basic needs have been met. It also means that their dignity has been acknowledged, and that they have the opportunity to have happiness and satisfaction in their lives, without causing a threat or destroying the happiness of other beings (Deng, Liu, Wallis, Duncan & McManus, 2017). Most organizations go by the idea of sustainable prosperity so that they can cause as little damage to the environment and to other companies, while still trying to make a profit (Yates & Marra, 2017). The Quadruple Bottom Line is one of the best methods to achieve sustainable development. In a competitive environment, there is a great chance for companies to try to destroy each other, which can also lead to an issue for the industry. It is an extension of the triple bottom line, with an added inclusion of purpose in the organization. There are 4 major aspects to the Quadruple Bottom Line.
People
The first P of the Quadruple Bottom Line focuses on people. People are an essential element to the organization, and by ensuring that the people in the organization, the employees and those buying from the organization, or customers, are looked after, an organization can attempt to be sustainable (Fonseca & Ferro, 2016). An example of organizations that have been faced by issues due to the labour, and the way that labour and employees within the organization have been treated is Amazon. In order to make profits, there have been reports that Amazon pays minimum wage to their employees, and does not provide them with bathroom breaks, which can destroy the health of the employees (Walters & Takamura, 2015). While they have received flack from the media and the general public over the treatment of their labour, there has been no other punishment that the organization has received. Meanwhile, there have been cases of poor wages for McDonald’s workers in the USA, and this has caused a major issue, with many politicians demanding that McDonald’s increase the wages of their employees. In order to be sustainable enterprises, the organizations would have to increase the wages, and provide better opportunities for their employees. Organizations, such as Starbucks, have successfully accepted the Quadruple Bottom Line, and have provided their employees a decent wage, and does not exploit any of the constituencies that they derive their profit from as well. Most of their products are from the fair-trade market, and this means that it has minimal damage on the people that have grown the coffee.
Planet
An organization that follows the Quadruple Bottom Line includes the environment as an element in their sustainable practices. They would be able to provide their products, and continue their operations, so as to minimize the impact that they have on the environment. This could refer to the products, as well as the process that goes into making the products. For example, Starbucks, in many of their stores, aims to create a process to grind their coffee to make it least damaging to their environment. They also plan on having a wastewater and food management system that aims to reduce the waste that is produced, thus benefiting both the environment and the organization, in terms of less waste and increased profit.
Purpose
This is where the Quadruple Bottom Line differs from the triple bottom line. The triple bottom line does not include the purpose of the organization. The purpose can be the spirituality or culture of the organization, and is often one of the biggest motivating factors in the company (Larner, Cheverst, MacDonald, Hoile and Sourtar, 2017). There are many organizations that hep their customers have a purpose, and a culture in their lives. Eat My Lunch, for example, provides the customer with a sense of purpose from buying from their organization. It provides customers with a feeling of purpose, of having paid for a meal for someone else. Purpose helps in building the community, and this can have a significant impact on the organization as well.
Profit
This is the final element in the Quadruple Bottom Line. For every organization to succeed, they need to be profitable. However, the Quadruple Bottom Line looks at making profit for the organization through the use of the other three elements, which were People, Planet and Purpose. But sustainable prosperity does not just focus on profit for the company, but also on profit for the entire host environment (Lawler, 2018). There are many organizations, such as Eat My Lunch, or Starbucks, or BodyShop, that aim to distribute the profits amongst the society, and help in improving the community around them. Can also be the profit part of the sustainable prosperity.
Stakeholders are those who are affected by the organization, and shareholders are those who can benefit from the organization. Stakeholders can be the employees of the company, suppliers and vendors who produce the raw materials, or just common customers. Shareholders are those who have a say in the organization, since they own a part of the company through the stock. Companies that are greatly impacted by the stakeholders, and provide for the stakeholders are likely to have an increased performance. This means that the organization would be successfully creating an environment that is beneficial to the employees (Paunovi?, & Jovanovi?, 2017) . This would lead to an increased amount of job satisfaction and job involvement. Job involvement is the process by which an employee is emotionally and psychologically motivated to work in their jobs. There can be an increased benefit to having employees who, when given the choice, would put the company’s interest above their own interests, which can be beneficial to the organization. This can increase the profit for the organization, and can have a dramatic impact on how the organization is portrayed to the public as well (Fonseca, 2015). A large part of the stakeholders are also made up by the customers. By focusing on the customers, and their needs and wants, the organization has been able to effectively respond to the market, and create products that are most suited for their customers (Pizzirani, et al., 2018). This means that the number of customers would increase, which is the primary way in which organizations can increase their profit. This can be seen in the case of McDonald’s. By paying attention to their customers, McDonald’s has been effectively gaining a monopoly on the fast food business all over the world. They have a different menu in each country, and relay heavily on customer feedback to create new flavours in the country. This has led to increased customer base, and better profits.
Listening and understanding, as well as catering to, stakeholders instead of shareholders can have a dramatic impact on the organization. This is called Corporate Social Responsibility, and encourages customers to take in stakeholders into the decision-making process and not just the shareholders. Under corporate social responsibility, even the general public becomes a stakeholder, since an initiative or decision taken by the company could impact the general public a great deal (Allevato, 2018). For example, when an organization decides to switch to traditional, non-renewable forms of electricity, it can increase the pollution, and lead to global warming. While this might be cheaper than having solar panels, and using solar energy to power their stores, it can damage the environment as well. Thus, the stakeholders would be negatively impacted by the decision, but the shareholders would be benefitted.
By paying more attention to the stakeholders, the organization can increase their public image, job satisfaction and involvement within the organization, as well as the general environment within the organization. This can lead to an increase in the profits for the company, which would impact the shareholders (Butler, 2015). Listening to stakeholders can mean better sustainability, since the stakeholders are large in number, and it would be for the general good of the society that the decisions would be made by them, and not just according to the profits.
The tourism industry in New Zealand is one of the most important industries. Tourism is one of the biggest contributors to the economy of the country, and this can have an immense impact on the way that tourism companies within the country can behave. There are a number of laws regarding sustainability in the tourism industry in the country, and two companies have been discussed in the following.
The first organization is Flying Kiwi, which is an adventure tour company that is based in New Zealand. The organization provides adventure tours, for individuals and groups all over New Zealand. These include visits to National Parks, heritage sites, as well as cycling trips, hiking and camping options, as well as the option for beach trips. They have even had a few weddings that they have done (Osbourne, Baldwin & Thomsen, 2016). While the organization is not very old, and has relied solely on Facebook and Google reviews, they have been extremely successful in getting tourists off the beaten track and to explore the outdoors that New Zealand has to offer the people. They provide adventure tours, winter tours, tours for students and for groups. The organization has been successful in following the Quadruple Bottom Line. They have paid immense attention to the people, whether they are employees who would help customers in their tours, the customers themselves, and the local people that they would meet in the tours. The organization is able to pay the tour operators a decent salary, and they have also been successful in ensuring that they have minimum stress and follow the labour laws (Steyn & Niemann, 2014). They have also paid attention to the environment, and ensure that there is minimum damage to the environment due to their tours. During camping and hiking, customers are encouraged not to litter and harm the environment in any way. They however, do not have a bigger purpose or culture in the organization, since they are based on adventure in New Zealand. However, they have been profiting from their sustainable practices, and have been known to give back to the environment as well. Overall, they have been following most of the aspects or elements of Quadruple Bottom Line.
The second organization is Contiki Tours. This is a larger organization, and was founded in 1962 by Chris “Clawrence” Lawrence. The name is said to arise from a Maori good luck charm, which makes the organization one of the few that acknowledges the Maori tribe in New Zealand. They are very popular with the youth, and are one of the largest youth-based traveling company in the world. They have had significant impact on the tourism industry in New Zealand and have become one of the most well-known traveling groups in the world. They offer a variety of tours, which range from adventure to sight-seeing. They however, do not follow the Quadruple Bottom Line. The organization does follow some of the elements, but not all. Since they are a tourism company, they do care for the people. All of the employees and customers are extremely happy within the organization, and they are not stressed by the organization, and there is not much harm that has been caused to the lives of the employees (Miller, de Barros, Kattan & Wirasinghe, 2016). However, they provide cruises, which have been known to cause harm to the environment. They do not encourage their customers to save the litter, and have been known to cause a great deal of damage to the environment. The organization does not care about the Planet element in the Quadruple Bottom Line. They are a tourism company, which means that their main purpose, as a private company is on profit. This means that the purpose of the organization, or culture is not present either. However, they try to provide tours that are related to the Native Australians, and try including members of the Maori tribe in their tours (Simmons, Robinson, Lee & Bragg, 2017). They also try to give a part of their profit to the struggling members of the community. However, they are not largely impacted by the Quadruple Bottom Line model, and only follow some elements from it.
Sustainable development goals are sustainable goals that countries take, during a meeting in the United Nations, in order to develop sustainably. There are 17 goals in total, and they are a part of the 2030 Agenda (Amrah & Langsten, 2017). They are broad, but have a list of targets that should be achieved by each of the participating and signatory countries. These are also called Global Goals, and can range from reducing poverty and hunger, to making sure that the impact of the countries on the environment is reduced, and to cut down on carbon emissions. They also include improving access to health and education, and providing access to institutions and research (Tsui, 2013). However, in order to attain sustainable development goals, it is essential to have the right kind of leadership. This means ensuring that the leaders who led the country are able to fill two main roles. There are two main goals that are given importance to, which is ending hunger and poverty. The two goals are connected, since in many ways, they removing poverty, hunger can also be removed. These are the two main goals adopted by many countries, including France, which has been used as an example in the following cases. The goals have been to end poverty and reduce hunger, since there are over 815 million people in the world who go hungry every day. While most of these people are in the developing parts of Asia and Africa, there are poor and hungry people in the developed countries as well, which is why they are world-wide goals
Leadership and Management has one of the key roles to play in management of resources so that the global goals have been met. By effectively managing the resources, which are limited in many cases, leaders can prioritise one type of goal over another. For example, a country might have met the sustainable goals in terms of education, but might not have in terms of healthcare (Babu & Mohan, 2018). Then the leader of the country would have to effectively manage the resources so that healthcare in the country can be improved as well. If a leader is unable to manage resources, then there might be unnecessary expenditure, and corruption within the organizations that help in attaining the sustainable goals (Caputi, De Lestang, How, Trinnie & Fletcher, 2018). For example, the first two goals are zero poverty and No Hunger goals, which many countries such as France have taken more seriously than the other goals. This has led to the management of the resources, so that the goals can be achieved effectively. This would mean making sure that there are enough funds that are reserved
In order to effectively attain all the Sustainable Goals, the leadership or management has to prioritise the goals. This would mean ensuring that the goals which are most needed are attained first (Davis, Alibasic & Norris, 2018). For example, if a country is lacking in both the education and healthcare goals, but the education goal has almost been obtained, it would be better to prioritise on the healthcare goals, so that they can attain those goals as well. For this, the leadership should be practical, and be able to visualise the short-term and long-term goals. It must also be realistic, so that they can understand which of the goals are attainable and which ones need external help. For France, the main goal from all the above goals had been the prioritising of the goal of Zero Poverty. They would have to make sure that this goal is achieved before deciding to start on another goal. By prioritizing their goals, the government ensures that these goals are met and that they do not need to be revisited.
Conclusion
Being sustainable, whether for an individual organization or a country is extremely difficult. There are a lot of factors and thoughts that have to go in, and the leadership and management has to consider a lot of factors to make the organization sustainable. The above looked at how Flying Kiwi and Contiki Tours used the Quadruple Bottom Line in order to become more sustainable. While Contiki Tours, being a global tourism company, was not able to be entirely sustainable and there were elements of the Quadruple Bottom Line that were not followed. Flying Kiwi on the other hand, followed most of the elements of the Quadruple Bottom Line, which consists of People, planet, Profit and Purpose. The above also looked at how leadership and management can help a country achieve the Sustainable Goals, which were set by the UN for its Agenda 2030. It looks at how management of resources and prioritising goals can help in achievement of the Agenda 2030 goals.
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