Sustainability: The Business Perspective docx

[...]... in the past? There are several factors that seem to us to make the current position different in principle from the past This principle difference is that the scale of human activity on earth is now approaching the same scale as the natural cycles that occur around the globe The use of fossil fuels over the last one hundred years has changed the composition of the atmosphere Human engagement with other... professor of business administration at the Darden School of the University of Virginia conceived of organisational stakeholders in his book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (1984) In the traditional view of the firm, the shareholder MH (Majority Holder) view (the only one recognized in business law in most countries), the shareholders or stockholders are the owners of the company, and the firm... quite another for the global use of fossil fuels to change the global climate so that sea levels rise and threaten large parts of the world’s population with flooding Most of the interest in sustainability is not parochial – it is not the inhabitants of Cornwall protecting the interests of the future inhabitants of Cornwall It is a concern for the future inhabitants of the globe as a whole Some of the latest... Chapter 2: Business and the Trust Deficit Historically the primary role of business has been focused on generating returns for shareholders Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate, famously stated that the business of business is business, ’ implying that any deviation from this primary purpose could be viewed as a waste of shareholders’ money Yet in the past 10-15 years, increasing numbers of business leaders... Business together with the name of the business Summarise what the business did to betray trust, why you think it might have happened, who it impacted and how they might address the issue and avoid repetition Spend 20 minutes on this and write no more than 200 words Business and its Stakeholders Public and voluntary sector organisations do not have the same shareholder obligations as those in the private... Director of the United Nations Environment Programme in 1998 “At the beginning of the 18th century, there were less than a billion people in the world sharing less than a million cubic kilometres of freshwater In 1900, there were about 2 billion people sharing the same amount Now there are more than 6 billion people and the freshwater supply has remained constant.” Another difference is that with the increased... levels down 46% in the US and 30% in the UK Perhaps the most important, if largely unsurprising, highlight of the report was that ‘trust is now an essential line for business Interestingly, the report alludes to the changing expectations of business by the general community, with respondents talking about a notion of ‘shared value’ Specifically, the report concludes that business must align profit and purpose... dangerous doom-mongers All these epithets have been attributed to people who have issued such warnings There are many theories as to why for instance the Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Mayan and Polynesian civilisations collapsed - you may be familiar with some of them from TV documentaries or books? Among them are theories that the pattern of human demands in those societies damaged their environmental support... strengthen their license to operate within the community This adoption has been accelerated by the dramatically decreasing levels of trust of businesses by the general public in the wake of high profile corporate scandals and bankruptcies This session attempts to identify the key drivers for this change – social, environmental, institutional – and to summarise what this means for businesses in the 21stcentury... between their business strategies and corporate social responsibility Moreover the concept is remarkable in their last article "Creating Shared Value" The central premise behind creating shared value is that the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities around it are mutually dependent Recognizing and capitalizing on these connections between societal and economic progress has the . predicted that the scarcity of resources would eventually lead to the cessation of economic growth – thereby earning economics the title the dismal science’. Observations of the (then) present. is now approaching the same scale as the natural cycles that occur around the globe. The use of fossil fuels over the last one hundred years has changed the composition of the atmosphere. Human. to broaden the potential of the module and allow students to pursue their own investigation of the topic. The final assessment task is to create a sustainability strategy for a business of