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Developing sustainable corporations in AustraliaNayak, Raveendra, raveendranayak@yahoo.com.au January 2006 (has links)
In the wake of the environmental degradation, social inequality and injustice, and the
incidents of corporate frauds and mismanagement reported in Australia, domestic
business organisations have been asked increasingly by Australian governments and
people to pursue sustainable business practices. As prime movers of creating wealth
and employment, business organisations have an important and legitimate role to play
in sustainable development, which is defined as a notion that meets the needs of
present without compromising the ability of future generations.
Corporate sustainability, which is a subset of the concept of sustainable development,
involves integrating financial, social, and environmental values into business policy,
planning, and decision-making requiring changes in organisational values,
perspectives, culture, structure, and performance measures. Many Australian
businesses are wary of meeting financial, social, and environmental objectives
simultaneously claiming the agenda as contradictory and almost unattainable, but the
demand for achieving corporate sustainability seems inescapable. Since Australian
businesses are facing a fierce competition in domestic market as a result of reducing
trade barriers, globalisation, and market deregulation, demanding them to contribute
more to sustainable development may appear to be unreasonable. Furthermore,
business managers are often wary of any organisational changes, as several of them
have failed in creating organisational value. As a consequence, business managers are
cautious of engaging in sustainable business practices.
In an attempt to unravel the above dilemma, this study mainly examined how to
enhance organisational value by sustainable business practices. It examined the two
dominant strategic management theories, i.e. Barriers to Entry theory and the
Resource-Based View (RBV) theory. It collected the data from 102 Australian
business organisations using a survey method. Based on its findings, this study makes a number of contributions to the theory and practice of strategic management.
Notable among them are, first, it shows that socially crafted business practices such
as knowledge management, customer relationship management, and stakeholder
management can have substantial leverage to building business competitiveness.
Second, it demonstrates that environment-oriented business practices can provide a
number of effective opportunities for increasing the height of entry barriers to new
competition. Third, this study concludes that social-oriented business activities are
almost ineffective as entry barriers to new competition. Fourth, it substantiates why
environment protection measures such as Environmental Management System (EMS)
are least contributing to business competitiveness. Finally, this study substantiates its
main claim that a business organisation can enhance its competitive advantage by
pursuing corporate sustainability principles. This study upholds the view that
business organisations have enlightened self-interest in following corporate
sustainability.
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