Greening of Business- Critical Review of Literature

Bergquist (2017) holds that green business, a topic that is explored in business dissertation help, is driven by push for sustainability through utilisation of resources that include water, energy, and raw materials coupled with reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) centres the drive. The heightening demand for environmentally consciousness in sourcing of materials and production has forced companies and business entities adopt approaches aligned to green consumerism. The general idea of greening of business is rooted on the shift of consumers’ consumption behaviour towards eco-friendly products and those that subscribe to sustainability of environment through environmentally driven production, distribution, and disposal (Gast et al., 2017). Such events as global warming, changing climate patterns, melting of glaciers, and frequent natural disasters have led to consumers being concerned with their respective consumption behaviour questioning the sourcing, production process, supply chain, and disposal aspects of the products and service they consumer. Recently, as illustrated by the findings by Kasseeah (2020), the questions such as what is the impact of the product/service on the environment, is the material and sourcing sustainable in relation to environment, is production rely on fossil fuel or renewable, and what is the extent to which the company goes to combat carbon dioxide emission over the production process of the product have dominated the consumer space. The causing factors pushing business into eco-friendly and sustainability has been changing consumers’ preferences and behaviours into sustainable consumerism.

These as pointed out by Ziniel and Bradley (2018) on a study into greening SMEs in across Britain, business entities forced to contended into balancing meeting changing consumer preferences and increasing the cost of production. The findings indicates that ethical marketplace drawn from the individual-level determinants that include conscientiousness and awareness on environmental impact, and area-level factors encompassing politics, socio-economics, and cultural aspects as driving factors towards eco-friendly consumerism. Although, in some countries such as the UK and Denmark, stringent regulations are being enacted geared towards environmentally friendly consumption. For instance, the increasing electric cars market is traceable to two key variables, first consumers eco-consciousness resulting to moving away from carbon dioxide production vehicles, and secondly, governments subsidies of the electric vehicles. Profoundly, as illustrated by Gast et al. (2017), intensified call for business to restructure business models into a greener and more sustainable way ushering in such concepts as ‘green entrepreneurship’ and ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’ where business changes to meet the eco-friendly operations and products.

Investigating the drivers for successful adoption of green business, Sarkar et al. (2021) pointed advancing the environmental and social against economic aspects where failure to consider such factors would have a ripple effect in shift to greening business environment. The motivation to adopting eco-friendly approaches for business can be consumers’ willingness to pay for higher prices, but in the case where the consumers’ preference do not reflect actual buying, going greener can only be driven by incentives. Ashton et al. (2017) indicated that business entities are more inclined to shift green practices due to competitiveness and cost factors rather than social responsibilities or consumers and government pressure. Based on this, one can infer that green business is multifaceted phenomena encompassing consumers’ behaviours, preferences, government policies and laws, social corporate responsibility, and businesses returns. Collectively, these are core role in going green.

References

Ashton, W., Russell, S. and Futch, E., 2017. The adoption of green business practices among small US Midwestern manufacturing enterprises. Journal of environmental planning and management, 60(12), pp.2133-2149.

Bergquist, A.K., 2017. Business and sustainability: new business history perspectives. Harvard Business School General Management Unit Working Paper, (18-034).

Gast, J., Gundolf, K. and Cesinger, B., 2017. Doing business in a green way: A systematic review of the ecological sustainability entrepreneurship literature and future research directions. Journal of Cleaner Production, 147, pp.44-56.

Kasseeah, H., 2020. Green measures and firm characteristics: evidence from small businesses in an emerging economy. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 27(1), pp.55-64.

Sarkar, A., Qian, L., Peau, A.K. and Shahriar, S., 2021. Modeling drivers for successful adoption of green business: an interpretive structural modeling approach. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 28(1), pp.1077-1096.

Ziniel, C. and Bradley, T., 2018. Greening British Businesses: SMEs and the New Wave of the Environmental Social Movement. The International Journal of Social Quality, 8(2), pp.1-26.

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