Certified B Corporations' Social Impact

Introduction

Certified B Corporation is a business that qualifies to meet the greatest standards of varied environmental and social performance, legal accountability and public transparency to balance profit and purpose. They are legally needed to consider the effect of their decision on customers, workers, community, environment and suppliers. This is the leadership community that drives a global movement of people that uses business as a force for the good. Most challenging problems of society cannot be solved by non-profit and government alone (Furnham & Gunter ,2015).B Corp community has put a lot of effort towards reducing inequality, the creation of quality jobs, low levels of poverty and a healthier environment. Through harnessing business power, B corps uses growth and profit as a pathway to a greater end: remarkable impact for communities, environment and employees (Nicholas & Sacco ,2016).

Sustainability concept evaluation

Discussion of sustainability has its roots in environmental sustainability which has then gradually expanded to economic and social sustainability known as the three dimensions of sustainability or three-pillar concept.

The three pillar of sustainability

Social sustainability highly depends on the sustainability of the economy and vice versa, but both rely on environmental sustainability. The three dimensions of sustainability do not fully reflect the fundamental role of the components of the environment in the sustainability discussion (Wilburn & Wilburn,2015).The human system is a subsystem that is dependent on the greater system it lives within. Therefore, environmental sustainability is given a priority of the three pillars.

Sustainability reframing

Working in the environmental or forestry sector, a clear concise is needed to effectively communicate sustainability preconditions. Definition of the concept is therefore proposed to coherently describe the given character of the main sustainability and the general use of the word 'sustainability" in line with an attribute that, accept to specify the sustainability one would talk about (Romi & Dixon ,2018).

Definition of the major sustainability concept.

Priority: Among the three pillars, the sustainability of the environment comes first. The economic and social sustainability subsystem dependent

Beneficiary: The people who suffer in event sustainability has not been accomplished are the beneficiaries of the concept of sustainability.

Beneficiary =animals +people+plants

Environmental sustainability

When discussing a given sustainability concept, for instance, the core concept of sustainability a distinguishable terminology is needed. In addressing this major concept, environmental is proposed to be used in conjunction with a suitable sustainability term. The word environmental sustainability pair assists in distinguishing the term and concept of unrelated use (Banerjee,2011).

Sustainability value creation

The literature review of industrial sustainability suggests the whole system design technique and system thinking as one of the critical ways of understanding sustainable value. This section presents the whole system design, system thinking and system innovation as main ideas for the concept of sustainable value creation.

System Thinking

This is a technique used for the investigation of the entire systems that seek to understand, the interaction, the boundaries and the relationship between parts of a system. It is specifically designed to modelling an intricate open system where an integrated understanding is needed at both the macro and micro-level to manage change. Nicholas, 2016 says that the most essential system property is the fact that they consist of many parts that are not separated, but instead they are closely interlinked, thereby forming a more complex structure. Systematic thinking enhances understanding of this complex system and enables utilization of the linkages and interrelationships as opposed to things.

Overall System design

The overall system design is one way to approach a sustainable design that provides great potential. However, principles, methods and principles guiding the whole system design approach are not well defined by practising designers. Lozano describe the whole system to be optimizing and not just some parts but the overall system. The overall system thinkers tend to see wholes and not parts, patterns and interrelationships rather than static snapshots individual things. They seek remedies that address multiple challenges simultaneously. Authors suggest that system reframing with a whole system assist in understanding fully the impact manufacturing brings to the world and ways of changing it (Lozano, 2011).

System innovation

It has been argued that innovation needed for sustainable development should move further than incremental adjustments. Development sustainability needs the transformation of big parts consumption and production system. De Crescenzo defines system innovation as a bunch of actions that change a system to a path that is more sustainable. It is argued that sustainable development requires systematic and radical innovations. These innovations can be created effectively when setting up the concept models. Business models offer the concept link between economic performance and sustainable innovation at higher levels of the system (Decrescenzo,2016).

Embedding sustainability

When it comes to embedding sustainability, there is no one size that fits all models. It depends on organization structure, mission, culture and people. For a B Corp to embed its sustainability which would make people proud, there are critical aspects that must be put in place. These measures include:

Sustainability facilitating committee

In order to make B Corp successful, the strategy of sustainability must be established on achievable and ambitious target, and it must fully get the support of the management. The management team work together to approve the sustainability plans and make an important verdict to guide and give direction to the company towards accomplishing sustainability goals.

Implementation of policies and guidelines into the supply chain.

B Corp designers are endorsed by product safety technicians, team, and quality assurance to ensure that activities of the business represent the sustainability strategy. It calls for teamwork to achieve shared goals of making up safe, high-quality and sustainable products that clients would love and value. The suppliers can sometimes depend on the support network teams to assist in the implementation of production requirements (Moroz et al .,2016).

Stakeholder's engagement

Other than examining new developments in innovation, technology and legislation, B Corp carefully listens to clients and stakeholder's feedback on what is expected in sustainability. This feedback is important and used to make future changes. Communication channels have been created via customer service to make it easier for the stakeholders to share their thoughts. Direct contact with relevant authorities is also put in place to facilitate updates on sustainability developments (Lozano,2011).

Sunrise produce an example of certified B corporations as one of the potential solutions to the ever-growing challenge of sustainability.

Sunrise produce, one of the internationally renowned certified B Corporation employs tools and techniques that can potentially find a solution to the ever-growing challenges of sustainability. These include:

Embedding sustainability into the core of the business.

This initiative has enabled the corporate company to create value across its capitals such as financial, social and environmental capital. Sustainability integration has also led to its greater improvement in employee engagement, comprehensive understanding of opportunities and better decision making (Nicholas & Sacco, 2016). In addition to that, sustainability integration has enabled sunrise produce and find a better way of solving today's problems such as climate change and water scarcity.

Sunrise produce uses four channels to embed sustainability simultaneously into the business in order to enhance sustainability, these pathways include:

Enjoyment of business model thinking

Understanding of techniques used by a business to create value has enabled sunrise produce to find areas where sustainability can embed further in the company. Business mapping model process builds a deeper understanding of the business purpose and proposition. An illustration of the business model visually can be often shared both externally and internally (Hoffmann et al.,2009).

Culture Tapping

Culture corporate plays a major role in sustainability integration and is closely related to a company's leadership. Sunrise produce employs Cultures that embrace collaboration and innovation to foster the integration sustainability, cultures that are change-resistant and risk-averse can be strategically leveraged or dramatically shifted to continue embedding sustainability into the core business (Moroz et al .,2016).

Transparency leverage

Reporting integration is the transparency aspect that both reflects and drives B corporate movement to an integrated approach towards sustainability. Creating an integrated approach process cross-foster greater knowledge and understanding about ways the B corporate creates value areas that are ripe for integration. It also assists in the communication of the integrated nature of B corporate model (Hoffmann et al.,2009).

Utilizing materiality

Assessment of materiality positions is to align B Corporation's sustainability and financial materiality. It also embeds issues of sustainability into the core strategy of the business. Sunrise produce focuses on a select issue that the company uses to identify problems that affect the business, and therefore it dedicates resources to set up metrics and goals. This issue is then embedded fully into the business. Once a select issue has been integrated into the business other issuers can then be embedded into the core business strategy (Romi & Dixon ,2018).

Application of sustainability lens to services and products

Sustainable development of services and products fosters the sustainability integration deeply into the business through numerous departments' engagement. Sunrise produce has embedded issues of sustainability into the company operation by applying the lens of sustainability through lifecycles analysis, scorecards and indices (Wilburn & Wilburn,2015). Sunrise produce applies pillars of sustainability concept to resolve the ever-growing challenge of sustainability. These pillars include:

The Environmental Pillar

Environmental pillar normally gets the most attention. Sunrise produce focuses on cutting down their carbon footprints, water usage, packaging waste and overall impact on the environment. Reducing the amount of material involved in packaging often reduce the total spending on those materials. One of the problems with the environmental pillar is that business effects are not usually costly implying that there are externalities that are exempted. The total costs of land reclamation, carbon dioxide, wastewater and waste, in general, is difficult to calculate due to the fact that companies are not often the ones directly involved in the waste they produce. This calls for the need of benchmarking to assist in quantification of externalities.

The social pillar

Social pillar is a poorly defined concept. Sunrise produce employs the concept of the social pillar and this has enabled it to have approval and support of its stakeholders, employees and the communities around. The approaches to maintaining and securing this support are many but breaks down to fair treatment of employees and being good neighbour both locally and globally. On the side of employees, sunrise produce refocuses on engagement and retention strategies.

The economic pillar

This is the sustainability pillar where most businesses are feeling to be on firm ground. It is mandatory for a business to be profitable in order for it to be sustainable. Profit cannot supersede the other two pillars. In fact, the economic pillar does not involve profit at any cost. Activities that feature in economic pillar include proper governance, risk management and compliance(Nicholas & Sacco ,2016).These are activities on stake used by sunrise produce in order to be sustainable. Sunrise produce finds it easy to come on board with strategies of sustainability because of the inclusion of profit and economic pillar. Economic pillar offers a counterweight to measures that business corporations are sometimes forced to adopt, for example, chemical fertilizers or fossil fuels instead of phasing in changes.

Sustainable models of business

This is a concept of sustainable value used by sunrise produce to curb the sustainability challenge. Business models are innovations that create a significant positive and negative reduction effect on society and environment through a transformation in a way that the organization deliver and capture value. In order to confront the pressing sustainable future problems, sunrise produced has introduced a change at the business core model in order to confront sustainability at its Cornerstone instead of an add-on to wave negative outcome of the business. The ambition level of the business model should be focused and high towards maximizing environmental and societal benefits and just economic gain. (Wilburn & Wilburn,2015). The sustainability model describing how sunrise produce does its business has enabled it to receive good attention from both practitioners and academia. Business innovation is cycling and interactive through the following steps:

Understanding

An organization requires a clear picture of how their business model captures and deliver value, as well as weaknesses and strength. This should be in light with key trends and dynamics within the business environment.

Innovation

An organization should create options to a new business model as sunrise produce does. These should otherwise be observed as an assumption until a proper test with the market is done. Insights gotten from business models used can be essential as inspiration.

Validation

Through market testing prototype concepts, assumption and viable positions, sunrise produce has learned to continue with an existing planned approach to balance its business model. A core principle is to use rapid and continuous loops of validation.

Implementation

Here the business organization is instilled with the necessary confidence required for the implementation process of a new business model. This is achieved through pilots and small scale demonstrations that generate further refinements to trigger aspects of the business model thereby creating a foundation for elevating up success (Nicholas & Sacco ,2016).

Conclusion

As B Corporation continues to build a profile both in the scope of geographic and in relation to the economic corporation power and size seeking certification on how government, business and civil society observe the movement it will get the considerable effect on the future operation of the directive principles. This is specifically on whether or not B corps movement should be included in the National Action Plan (NAP). Currently, states are urged to accept stock of existing laws, policies and regulations that affect the corporate task to respect as part of their responsibility and to shield human right. In regard to this, countries are seeking consultation from civil society, regional and international actors in setting up the best gaps and practices in corporate social responsibilities(Lozano,2011). Consultation by the stakeholders continues across the globe on how B Corp is perceived, and whether it is finally endorsed in the human rights and business context. Certification of B Corp partially advances the responsibility of the corporate to respect human rights as stipulated in the guiding principles. The B Corp certification widely covers the policies recommended by the guiding principles however; the program is short of essential due diligence techniques and fails to incorporate any form of requirements into certification. Other than that, B Corp movement does a good job of protecting human right concern within environmental and labour law context. This analysis warns that B Corp should not be viewed as a panacea for human rights and business problem (Wilburn & Wilburn,2015). The movement can be viewed as the greatest standard for businesses that are socially responsible but this designation must not gain permanence. This does not imply that NAP should not support the B Corp movement, but it must put into practice that B Corps are not final examples of corporations that "respect human rights". Any support for the B Corporation in a NAP is suggested not to be accompanied with an extra disclaimer regarding its impact on the business stakeholder conceptualization maximization of wealth.

References

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