Sustainability Studio And Mitigate Climate Change Issues

Issue

Discuss about the Sustainability Studio And Mitigate Climate Change Issues.

The sustainability is the ability to support process over the long term without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. As per my view, sustainability issues create a problem in meeting the needs of the present. I have experienced that these sustainability issues create a problem in achieving the objective of the company. In this paper, I have identified climate change issue as a sustainability issue faced by Marks and Spencer (M &S).  Marks and Spencer is a multinational retailer specialized in clothing, home, and luxury food products. In this report, I have given a solution to mitigate climate change issues. The stakeholders and their engagement of the company have been discussed. The stakeholders of the company are described along with the examples. At last, the list of the requirements of the identified stakeholders is discussed.

There are sustainability issues which are faced by M & S. Being a part of the company; I have experienced the climate change issues out of the sustainability issues. The effects of climate change are becoming more evident day by day. I have experienced that climate change is the result of earth warming due to greenhouse emission generated by humans (Wiese, Zielke & Toporowski, 2015).

The company releases a huge amount of carbon in it’s supply chain from the production to the consumer use phase. As per my view, the climate change not only affects the quality of the products but raises economic issues as well. The adaption may also result from the change in material, techniques and the production process. I experienced that the climate change also raises various social, economic, ethical and political challenges. The company has to adjust the way it operates because of the climate change and it is something the company deals daily (Siwakoti, 2018). For instance, the warmer winters cause M & S to reconsider the kind of clothes sold and when they sell them. The design of clothes is also reviewed by the company. The lighter material is opted to produce clothes for the mild weather.   M & S searches for the smart materials which can be adjusted according to the modified temperatures.

The greenhouse gas emissions can be cut by avoiding the worst consequences of the climate change. The issue of climate change can be mitigated by becoming more efficient, reducing operational carbon footprint by 70% and making global operations carbon neutral to accelerate climate action. The investment can also be made carbon offsets for global operations in order to remain carbon neutral.

Way to mitigate the issue

As per my outlook, the company is also taking action on the climate change across the whole value chain. The carbon footprinting analysis focuses on the stores and logistics and reduces emissions from the supply chain and the basic activities used by customers for products. The company is making efforts to switch to lower carbon technologies (Otitoju & Enete, 2016). The company is also trying to mitigate the climate change issue by coping up with the extreme weather events. The planning made to minimize threats and maximize opportunities evolves the climate impacts.

I believe that the company can resolve such issues and take actions on climate change by working with other organizations. WRAP, The carbon trust, WWF and Forum for the future are the organizations which help the company to define and measure carbon footprint. It helps in improving product sustainability. M & S can use weather data and analytics to predict what customers going to need and can execute against that. The inventory can be planned on the basis of historical trends.

The company owes it’s success to the support provided by stakeholders. Our company builds strength and engages with stakeholders when it comes to performance on the sustainability issues. As per my opinion, the company engages successfully with stakeholders about the transparency and accountability on the issues that concern them. It has created brand value such as inspiration, innovation, integrity and in touch which provides clarity and need to engage with stakeholders. The company engages with stakeholders in order to provide opportunities for them. The company is transparent on the account of performance due to changes in climate (Andriof, Waddock, Husted & Rahman, 2017). The company gets a response not only on the present projects but get a solid base for the future challenges it may face. The stakeholders are provided with sufficient knowledge by the company in order to advocate the plans and sustainability issues. I strongly favor that these plans help in achieving long-term goal of being a sustainable leader. The company is committed to it’s stakeholders by it’s policy of “transparency and traceability”. They help to improve the information available to them. The company effectively listens to it’s stakeholders and reflects the importance of their concerns (Cheung, et. al. 2015). The company engages with stakeholders in three different ways:

Reactively: M & S responds to the information requests, questions and queries relevant to the plans of the company and the specific sustainability issues.

Stakeholders and their engagement

Passively: The company provides information to make sure that the stakeholders are informed in a better way about the programmes. The stakeholders can access the information as per their interest.

Proactively: M & S facilitates engagement with stakeholders by actively involving them in the plans of the company. It helps in finding innovative solutions to the sustainability challenges and sharing of emergent and the best practices (Keshava, 2014). The more engagement with stakeholders results in more success of the plans of the company.

The stakeholders are the persons who have an interest in the company and are affected by it’s decisions. The stakeholders have an interest in the success and failure of the projects of the company. As per my view, they can have a positive and negative impact on the project. The stakeholders can be individuals, groups or organizations. The examples of stakeholders are:

Customers: The customers monitor the sales of the products. They have participated in the plans and the activities of the company. The customers are engaged with the company through retail customer services (Gardetti &Torres, 2017). The customers provide feedback to the company through the use of social media and emails.

Employees: The employees have involvement in the business groups. The feedback is generated through emails towards the implementation plans of the company. The employees are engaged in the annual surveys and participation in the activities and campaigns (Wilson, 2015).

Investors: The investors express their interest in the annual general meeting. The institutional investors are engaged with the company through meetings. The survey is made on the institutional investors.

Suppliers: The suppliers exchange information with the company through website and network. They attain a substantial proportion of revenue from the company. M & S make stakeholder engagement with the suppliers by supplier conferences, visits, and meetings (Jones, Comfort & Hillier, 2016).

Government and regulators: The company makes stakeholder engagement with the government through meetings. The government provides a response to the company through consultation on the important matters. There are also conferences arranged for the interaction between the company and the government.

Wider society: The society is also the perfect example of stakeholders. They engage with the M & S through participation in the benchmarking and surveys. They have the multi-stakeholder initiative (Jones, Hillier & Comfort, 2014). The company also have joint projects with them.

The identification of stakeholder requirements is an important part of the development of requirements. According to my opinion, the requirements of the identified stakeholders represent the business operations level that is employers, acquirers, customers and other stakeholders as they have a role in finding the solution for a problem (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017). The requirements for a solution provide the service required by the stakeholders. The company addresses the requirements of the identified stakeholders in it’s business policy. The list of the requirements of the previously identified stakeholders is given below:

Stakeholder with examples

Employees: M & S has more than 10,000 employees worldwide. The employees of the company belong to different background and intellect. They require fair treatment, secure jobs, reimbursements and good pay from the company. They also seek for the security for the human rights.

Customers: The customers are the persons who purchase goods and services from the company. They are the end users of the company and can better guide to the company about it’s products. The customers want high quality and variety of products at affordable prices.

The government: The government ensures that M & S is creating jobs for the citizens and paying taxes on time. They also set the laws to govern trading (Fernandez-Feijoo, Romero & Ruiz, 2014). The government makes sure that the company adheres to the laws like health and safety regulations, revenue, customs and more.

Conclusion

The climate change is the top concern for the M & S. The issue of climate change is mainly faced due to the greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. This challenge is taken as an effective action to address the sustainability issue. The company is making efforts to avoid the worst consequences of climate change by taking all the possible steps. The company has launched plans to tackle climate change and become efficient by reducing carbon footprint.

References

Andriof, J., Waddock, S., Husted, B. and Rahman, S.S., 2017. Unfolding stakeholder engagement. In Unfolding stakeholder thinking (pp. 19-42). Routledge.

Annan-Diab, F. and Molinari, C., 2017. Interdisciplinarity: Practical approach to advancing education for sustainability and for the Sustainable Development Goals. The International Journal of Management Education, 15(2), pp.73-83.

Cheung, S.K., Yuen, K.S., Li, K.C., Tsang, E.Y. and Wong, A., 2015. Open textbooks: engaging education stakeholders to share learning resources. International Journal of Services and Standards, 10(4), pp.225-239.

Fernandez-Feijoo, B., Romero, S. and Ruiz, S., 2014. Effect of stakeholders’ pressure on transparency of sustainability reports within the GRI framework. Journal of business ethics, 122(1), pp.53-63.

Gardetti, M.A. and Torres, A.L., 2017. Sustainability in fashion and textiles: values, design, production and consumption. Routledge.

Jones, P., Comfort, D. and Hillier, D., 2016. Materiality in corporate sustainability reporting within UK retailing. Journal of Public Affairs, 16(1), pp.81-90.

Jones, P., Hillier, D. and Comfort, D., 2014. Assurance of the leading UK food retailers’ corporate social responsibility/sustainability reports. Corporate Governance, 14(1), pp.130-138.

Keshava, S.R., 2014. Climate change, sustainable development and Indian economy. International Journal of Physical and Social Sciences, 4(7), p.123.

Otitoju, M.A. and Enete, A.A., 2016. Climate change adaptation: Uncovering constraints to the use of adaptation strategies among food crop farmers in South-west, Nigeria using principal component analysis (PCA). Cogent Food & Agriculture, 2(1), p.1178692.

Siwakoti, D.T.K., 2018. Climate change and global warming: a critical analysis. International Journal of Current Research in Life Sciences, 7(04), pp.1682-1684.

Wiese, A., Zielke, S. and Toporowski, W., 2015. Sustainability in retailing–research streams and emerging trends. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 43(4/5).

Wilson, J.P., 2015. The triple bottom line: Undertaking an economic, social, and environmental retail sustainability strategy. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 43(4/5), pp.432-447.