In today's world, it is essential to achieve sustainability, and different industries can play a key role in achieving this. Now, here are some questions to clarify their status quo:
Can we say that different industries are successful in achieving this goal? Or are their sustainability plans just decorative?
And the most important questions are:
What is your opinion about the current situation of industries in terms of sustainability? Do you have any suggestions for improving sustainability in these networks?
Respected Milad Kologar, I answer your question with the fear of not being able to meet your expectations. The concept of sustainable development has definitely invaded our entire lives, now everything has to be sustainable and it is the same for an American from New York, a wayu from the Colombian Guajira or a Russian from Siberia. The concept serves anyone and everyone and there is the first sign that it is, as you say, something absolutely decorative. There is no way to differentiate sustainability, there is no agreement on how to measure it, nor how to establish reasonable guidelines to achieve it. This problem is so complex that we have not noticed that the concept itself has antagonistic contradictions within it from the methodological point of view. The needs have a dialectical character, it is not the same needs that an inhabitant of the Amazonian or Ethiopian jungle has that of a Korean or an Ecuadorian. That is why I do not believe that in its current foundation this concept can be really valid. Obviously, I do not discard the concept, it is a very useful elaboration that we must use in favor of the development of humanity, especially because there is a worldwide consensus on its usefulness. The problem is how to really serve for real development, for the economy and for what you ask, for the development of industries anywhere in the world. In my opinion, the first problem is to see how the technologies used by companies impact the environment, how production is managed, what is their relationship with communities, how wealth is distributed and how industries prepare for closure. when the resources they use are exhausted, whether renewable or non-renewable, and how they prepare their employees to reintegrate into new economic scenarios. Obviously you will say that with these requirements no company will be sustainable and it is logical, but here the political elements of sustainable development come in. Society needs control systems of companies, of their profits, of their production systems where the participation of communities is another element of production. And that is another weakness of the concept of sustainable development, its proposals are in a spatial and political vacuum.
Several industrial sectors have made significant strides towards sustainability. Now 10 years old, you may still find useful clues in my annotated bibliography, "Sustainability and Business," available at . Section 3 reviews the state of affairs in 20 sectors.
Dear Juan Manuel Montero Peña ,
Thank you for sharing your interesting point of view with us. Your answer was exactly the kind of answers that I was expecting for my question. Because a lot of research has been done in this field and a lot of papers have been written, but I personally feel that this puzzle still has a lot of missing pieces. As you kindly mentioned, comprehensive and effective control systems for guiding the whole society through the complex dilemmas of today's world is one of those missing pieces. I personally think that finding ways to promote ethics in a society can be very helpful n being closer to sustainability in all sectors. In fact, as humans still play the most crucial role in production, industry, society, and policy-making, achieving an ethical synergy can be one of the most important missing pieces of this puzzle. How to achieve this, of course, is a very complex problem.
Dear Erwin Dreessen ,
Thank you for sharing your bibliography with us. That was really interesting. But my main purpose in bringing this discussion up was to take a critical look at the current state of sustainability, especially in industrial and business networks. Everyone has been talking about sustainability for many years, many articles have been written in this area, but there is still no exact scale to verify this complex issue and there are still many missing pieces for this puzzle. It is still questionable whether these solutions are really effective or just for showing off. It is obvious that there is always room for progress and satisfaction for every field of human endeavor. But, the complex question is that where is this point of satisfaction for sustainability? Who defines it? Or how to define it? How far are our industries from that point? What are the points that we all are missing in this area?
Dear Naushad Khan
,Thank you for the link. I know that there are a lot of papers in this subject, so, by asking this question, I wanted to look at it more critically.
Sustainability, broadly-defined, is not helpful in setting targets. What encompasses "sustainability"? Environmental (and if so, is it climate? Oceans? pollutants?) or economic (financial self-sufficiency/longevity) etc.
My opinion aside, certain firms, and industries are infact meeting their set targets, for example say Scope 1 + 2 green house gas emissions. Some have made their targets already. Some are close, and getting closer, both due to their strategic initiatives (buying more renewable power, or replacing diesel with on-site solar), or happenstance due to more structural reasons (selling off a business unit because it is not profitable).
Asking broad questions on "sustainability" will garner too many answers, some also conflicting. If you contextualize the meaning of sustainability, and specify an industry (financial services) or region (financial services in the US) or asset level (financial services in the US with net income of > $250MM) then you can start gather better responses as which industries are successful, and which are not. Perhaps read corporate reports or 3rd party industry analyst briefs of whether they were tangible goals or not; or how best to go from that information piece.
This is exactly the kind of enquiry that drove our recent research project: Article A stakeholder synergy perspective of ecological value creation
Dear Dr. Sanwar Sunny ,
Thank you for sharing your valuable insights and the useful link with us.
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