Management for Sustainable Organization
MBA905
Role of Management for Sustainable Organization
&
Outlining the Strategic Resilience and
Sustainability
Dr.
Dr. Mahmoud
Mahmoud AlZgool
AlZgool
Dean
Dean && Associate
Associate Professor
Professor
College
College of Administrative and
of Administrative and Financial
Financial Sciences
Sciences
[email protected][email protected]+97333428956
+97333428956
Topics
1 Role of Management for Sustainable Organization
Private Sector’s Resilience and Sustainability Planning System
2 Boundaries
Commencing Resilience and Sustainability
3 Planning
4 Activity
Seven Reasons Why Businesses are Embracing
5 Sustainability?
Topics
Six ways that embracing sustainability will
6 transform the business
7 Benefits of a Strategic Resilience and Sustainability Plan
Disadvantages of a Strategic Plan
8
Identifying the Current Conditions and
9 Resources
(5Is) Loop
10
Note
All the sources of these materials are from many references
listed at the last slides.
Role of Management for Sustainable
Organization
The roles of management in a sustainable organization are centered around integrating environmental,
social, and economic sustainability into every aspect of operations.
Here are the key roles:
• Strategic Leadership and Vision: Managers must develop a clear vision for sustainability that aligns
with the organization's goals. They must also create strategies to achieve this vision while balancing
long-term environmental and social impacts with profitability.
• Resource Management: Managers are responsible for using resources efficiently and promoting
sustainable practices, such as minimizing waste, reducing energy consumption, and managing supply
chains that adhere to sustainable standards.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging internal and external stakeholders, including employees,
customers, and communities, is essential. Managers must foster open communication about
sustainability efforts and address the concerns of various stakeholders.
Continued…
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Sustainable organizations rely on innovation to
improve processes and reduce their environmental footprint. Managers must encourage creativity
and adaptability to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Managers play a key role in integrating CSR into
business practices, ensuring that the organization contributes positively to the community and
society, through ethical labor practices, community involvement, and sustainable supply chains.
• Compliance and Governance: Ensuring compliance with environmental laws and regulations is a
critical management role. Managers must ensure that the organization adheres to both internal
policies and external sustainability regulations.
• Employee Engagement and Development: A sustainable organization requires the active
involvement of its workforce. Managers are responsible for creating a workplace culture that
encourages employees to embrace sustainable practices through education, training, and
empowerment.
Continued…
• Risk Management: Identifying and mitigating risks related to environmental and social issues is a
vital management role. This includes evaluating potential sustainability challenges and developing
plans to manage or avoid them.
• Long-term Financial Planning: Sustainable organizations require managers to think beyond short-
term profits. This includes investing in sustainable technologies, processes, and initiatives that might
not deliver immediate returns but are essential for long-term viability.
• Supply Chain Sustainability: Managers ensure that their suppliers adhere to sustainability
practices, such as reducing emissions, using renewable materials, and promoting fair labor
standards. Sustainable supply chains are integral to maintaining an organization's green credentials.
• Change Management: Leading an organization towards sustainability often requires significant
changes in culture, operations, and mindset. Managers must drive change effectively, ensuring all
employees are on board and aligned with sustainability goals.
Continued…
• Transparency and Accountability: Sustainability requires transparent reporting on environmental and
social performance. Managers must lead the effort in providing stakeholders with clear and truthful
information, ensuring accountability for sustainability initiatives.
• Collaboration Across Sectors: Sustainable managers often collaborate with governments, NGOs, and
other companies to solve larger sustainability challenges that go beyond their immediate business. This
role involves participating in joint sustainability initiatives or policy advocacy.
• Employee Well-being and Social Sustainability: Management must ensure that sustainability is not
just focused on the environment, but also on social aspects. This includes creating a healthy, inclusive,
and fair work environment that fosters employee satisfaction and well-being.
• Innovation in Product Design: Management in sustainable organizations must promote the design of
products and services that minimize environmental impact. This can involve creating products that are
energy-efficient, recyclable, or designed with a circular economy approach in mind.
• Integration of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Factors: Managers must integrate ESG
considerations into decision-making processes to ensure that sustainability goals are aligned with
broader corporate governance and social responsibility efforts.
Private Sector’s Resilience and Sustainability Planning System
Boundaries
As depicted in Fig. 1.3,
the private sector’s
successful integration of
strategic resilience and
sustainability elements
depend on multiple
factors and are defined
through changes in
governance,
environmental
interruptions, economic
challenges, and social
pressures.
Fig. 1.3 Private sector’s resilience and sustainability planning system boundaries
Commencing Resilience and Sustainability Planning
Sustainability and resilience planning include the practical approaches concerning value added to the organization
and the community. The process of embedding sustainability and resilience at all levels of organization involves
long-term commitment with a complete engagement. Several elements contribute to the successful application of
sustainability and resilience efforts, including but not limited to:
• Improved operational internal efficiency using service delivery and efficiency improvements;
• Notable policy and planning stages—sustainability plan, renewable energy goals, green building policy, climate
resilience plans, emergency management plans;
• Complete community’s participation and engagement in pursuit of resilience and sustainability;
• Positive engagement of staff and key stakeholders and involvement of all elected and appointed officials are
critically relevant;
Continued…
• Purposefully empowering employees to champion sustainability and resilience targets and
outcomes;
• Measuring, tracking, adjusting, observing, and reporting results of the resilience and
sustainability-related efforts, using progress reports. As part of such efforts, setting clear goals
and objectives is imperative, coupled with specific targets of the plan;
• Carefully connecting targets to the budget and financial plans and policies. Each segment of
creating a sustainable and resilient community is linked.
Activity
At a minimum, the starting position for strategic resilience and sustainability plan should include the
following list of questions:
• What are the organizational and community-wide governance, economic, environmental, and social issues?
• What projects and issues have the potential for the most impact from that organization’s perspective?
• How do sustainability and resilience align with organizational; goals, vision, and mission statements?
• Does the organization measure its greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint? If so, when was the report
last updated?
• Who are the principal stakeholders in the planning of sustainability and resilience strategies? Who are the
internal or external stakeholders, partners, and collaborators?
• What are the relevant steps to engage stakeholders?
Seven Reasons Why Businesses are Embracing Sustainability?
1. Improve corporate financial performance
2. Lower cost of capital
3. Improve risk management
4. Stay ahead of ESG compliance and reporting obligations
5. Enhance brand and increase competitive advantage
6. Attract, engage and retain employees
7. Foster innovation
Six ways that embracing sustainability will transform the business
1. Enhance your business’s reputation and attract new customers.
2. Cost savings through resource efficiency
3. Drive innovation and product development
4. Build trustworthy relationships with stakeholders
5. Gain a competitive advantage
6. Increase customer loyalty
Benefits of a Strategic Resilience and Sustainability Plan
• Contains the progressive effort with specific targets, baseline years, and benchmarks adjusted for annual
outcomes.
• Includes continuous events applied to unambiguous programs and policies.
• Allows for planning for disasters, climate change, pandemics, and emergency management.
• Includes a system-wide strategy to energy management, food production, urban tree canopy, transportation,
sustainable energy, mobility, economy, environment, equity, traffic, water, sewer, city operations, governances,
management, and administration.
• Develops a broader set of dynamic and measurable goals.
• Enables staff involvement and community outreach in a bottom-up approach and with public engagement.
• Measures and reports targets, goals, and outcomes.
Disadvantages of a Strategic Plan
• Static, a one-time event-oriented plan.
• Is limited in scope to management.
• Has a short-term focus and goals.
• Involves top-down approach with no input from staff or the community.
• Does not measure governance, economic, environmental, and social objectives and targets.
While the two types of plans appear similar, in practice, they are different in meeting organizational objectives.
A strategic plan relies on a static, linear definition of goals and objectives with a short-term focus.
By choosing a resilience and sustainability strategic plan, organizations avoid duplication of efforts. Beyond
manageable strategic components, well-defined resilience and sustainability planning efforts facilitate
consistent service delivery, operations continuity, and long-term goals and objectives.
Identifying the Current Conditions and Resources
•The external pressures on the built
environment are best explained using
the Quadruple Bottom Line strategy.
Governance factors are considered
under the management,
administration, and operations of the
organization's administrators and
managers.
•Leadership plays a relevant role, with
staff involvement, community
engagement, accountability,
transparency, fiscal responsibility,
answerability, ethics, and service
integrity.
“Initiate-Implement-Innovate-Inspect- Improve”
(5Is) Loop
•Resilience and
sustainability planning
management is a constant
process that combines
strategic planning and
leadership with other
management processes.
Resources and Handout
1. https://iob.ie/news/seven-reasons-why-businesses-are-embracing-sustainability
2. https://www.foundation-earth.org/6-ways-that-embracing-sustainability-will-transform-your-b
usiness-guest-blog/
3. https://www.sfmagazine.com/articles/2022/april/sustainable-business-management/
4. https://www.spiderstrategies.com/blog/corporate-sustainability/
5. Alibašić, H. (2022). Strategic Resilience and Sustainability Planning: Management
Strategies for Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Communities and Organizations. In
Sustainable Development Goals Series: Vol. Part F2708 (Issue February).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91159-1
Blogs
• https://greenerideal.com/news/business/
Thank You
