Sustainability Strategy and Development

Question: Discuss about the Sustainability Strategy and Development. Answer: Introduction There was a time when sustainable development was considered as a support function or a secondary function in the organization. However, with time, organizations realized the importance of this function. Today, CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility is considered as an important business function and it is considered that the focus on CSR would enable organizations to have better profits and revenue. The objective of this paper is to discuss and analyze the benefits of sustainability initiatives for Saudi Arabian Airlines. The company is commonly known as Saudia. It is the flag carrier airline of Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah It is correct that the focus towards sustainability, green measures and CSR are often started as regulatory measures. However, there are organizations like Saudia that are able to take sustainable measures and tactics as part of their core business function. The basic philosophy of sustainable development for Saudia can be shown as: For Saudia, the journey towards the sustainability started with a vision and government regulation. The good thing with Saudia is that it was quick to react to government regulations. The company created a culture where sustainability matters to its stakeholders. The key for sustainable development at Saudia is an integrated approach towards all the business functions. The management ensures that all the functions of the organizations are able to share the information. Cummings Worley (2009) argued that an organization grows the need of sustainability increases. When the company started its operations in 1945, the focus was on profitability and revenue. However, with time the management understood the importance of sustainable business practices. Today, the company ensures that sustainable business practices are an integral part of its business level strategies. The focus on sustainable business practices ensures that organizations can overcome all these threats. The Management of S audia realizes that it must take all the stakeholders together to achieve the vision of sustainability. The management ensures that the strategies and policies of sustainability should also be communicated to external stakeholders like customers. Over time, as a business stabilizes, organizational leaders often focus on effectiveness and efficiency and take a conservative approach to decision-making in the area of sustainability. The management believes that stakeholders support is must to make a difference in the business. It is believed that the focus on sustainable business practices is more in the maturity stage as compared to other stages of organizational development. It is important Saudia should continue to change and revamp its policies towards sustainable development. The policies and strategies around sustainable development should be flexible enough to change with industry forces. According to Miller and Friesens stages Saudia has passed its maturity stage and its movement to return to the company's "entrepreneurial roots" represents its attempts to emerge from the fourth stage, which is the revival stage. According to Phan, Baird, and Blair (2013) in the revival stage business units face a more dynamic environment than maturity stage units, and pursue innovation and product diversification in an attempt to reinvigorate the unit (p. 791). Activity based practices are reliant upon for decision making because there is a high level of reliance on the success of new product lines to ensure the s ustainability of the business units (Phan, Baird, Blair, 2013). With the marketplace competition Saudia is vulnerable to entering the fifth stage, which is the decline stage where business units are highly centralized, have no real strategy, and consider minimal amounts of information when making decisions (p. 791). The approach taken by the organization towards sustainability can be highlighted as: Ceschin (2014) suggests sustainability requires radical innovations (P. 1) necessitating the need to focus on the product, production and services. Moreover, Ceschin (2014) suggest that sustainability should be practiced as an inside-out policy. It means that internal stakeholders should initiate the workings around the sustainable development policies and the same should be communicated to external stakeholders. It seems that Saudia may have to revisit the vision and become more innovative and become agents of change. In order for this to take place they are going to learn how the design of socio-technical experiments can enable radical changes for sustainability (Ceschin, 2014) To my understanding the companys profits have stabilized, which is keeping Dell in business. The large organizations like Saudia can have real benefits of sustainable only when their supply chain is sustainable. Supply chain management systems have realized the benefits of a closed systems approach and the approach of closes system approach is the path towards sustainable development. According to Sahamie, Stindt, and Nuss (2013), the closed-loop supply chain management is a major contributor to implementing sustainable operations (p. 245). According to Carnrite (n.d.) the closed loop management system comprises five stages, which contribute to the success of a closed system. The first stage is discovery which focuses on the identification of the organizations internal tools and procedures and strategic concepts such as identifying core capabilities, defining the mission, vision and values, and conducting a competitor analysis (Carnrite, n.d.). The second stage is modeling which uses the information from the discovery phase and defines strategic objectives and initiatives (C arnrite, n.d.). The third stage is deployment, which links the strategy to operations (Carnrite, n.d.). The fourth stage is monitoring which is an ongoing evaluation of the organizational data for which the strategic objectives and initiatives were defined (Carnrite, n.d.). The fifth stage is optimization in which teams optimize a key component of the loop (Carnrite, n.d.). Based on the five stages the challenge to the supply chain management system is the reliance on people, process, and strategy, without ongoing consideration of the external environment. Saudia have been using the open system theory as a path towards the sustainable development. The open system theory for sustainability and sustainable development advocates that the sustainable policy of organizations should be open and transparent (Cummings Worley, 2009). It is believed that organizations that strive for efficiency or control may succeed with a mechanical approach. An open systems approach would not be a fit for an organization whose primary goals are efficiency or control. The success of the system and optimum operational system is contextual issues. The question brings to mind the clich "it depends." It is expected that Saudi Airline would continue to evolve as one of the preferred airline in kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The management of the company believes that it would be a source of inspiration for other companies in kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Conclusion The above paper discussed the sustainable development and sustainable strategy for Saudi Airlines. Some organizations become complacent and fail to change with the changing times. They remain closed and mechanistic, when an open, more organic structure would benefit them. Many organizations may not have taken a closer look at the alternative to a sustainable development approach to organizational development and growth. They function and have survived relying only on the organizational development approach that is and has been working for them over periods of time. The issue with this is that those same organizations may have missed a window of opportunity to becoming even greater, relative to organizational development, by taking into consideration the specific (suppliers, distributors, government organizations, competition, etc.) and general (laws, politics, cultural values, technology, etc.) environments at all times. Organizational development and the approaches used must be asse ssed and monitored to find out if room for continuous improvement exists. The above paper discusses the impact of sustainability initiatives and sustainable development on Saudia. The management of the company realizes that sustainability cannot be practiced as a silo business functions. Its true benefits could be realized only when organizations works with government. This is the reason that the organizations has been working with the government of various nations to craft a global sustainable vision. For the true benefits of sustainable development, a collaborative effort is need from all business functions. Coordinating efforts of finance and operations will result in effective management and decision-making. It will allow Saudi airlines to sustain financial stability and growth. It will allow Saudia to manage the amount of flights to maintain customer service and be aligned with the organizations goals and mission. It is essential and fundamentally sound for collaboration among business functions to the success of the sustainability plan. References Auzair, S. (2010). Organisational life cycle stages and management control systems in service organisations. International Journal Of Business and Management, 5(11), 56-65. Carnrite, J. (n.d.). Closed loop management system: Definition theory [Online post]. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/closed-loop-management-system-definition-theory-quiz.html Ceschin, F. (2014). How the design of socio-technical experiments can enable radical changes for sustainability International Journal of Design 8(3) 1-21. Cummings, T. G. Worley, C. G. (2009). Organizational Development Change. Mason, OH: South-Western. Phan, N.T., Biard, K., Blair, B. (2014). The use and success of activity-based management practices at different organizational life cycle stages. International Journal Of Production Research, 52(3), 787-803. Sahamie, R., Stindt, D., Nuss, C. (2013). Transdisciplinary research in sustainable operations - an application to closed-loop supply chains. Business Strategy and the Environment 22(4), 245-268