Environmental Process - Operations management & CSR
Environmental Aspect
It is no longer possible for companies to ignore the environmental impact of their operations as they need to respond to changing shareholder demands in order to remain profitable.
Investors are becoming more interested in a company’s environmental performance, “aware that the firms understand and manage their environmental impacts are best positioned to benefit from strategic opportunities.”1
According to research published in the Harvard Business Review in 2009, 75 percent of U.S. workforce entrants see social responsibility and environmental commitment as important criteria in choosing employers. This adds pressure to operational managers in terms of environmental practices if they want to attract employees
Customers are going ‘green’ and companies must meet their requirements or they will have to face the consumer backlash if their standards do not meet their sustainable requirements
More often than not it is operations management that is the centre of major environmental disasters causing pollution for example, as many of the cases are and for a range of reasons. Further on in the environmental scope we will analyze how an operational failure led to a pollution catastrophe causing headlines around the world. The main areas of operations management are listed below along with some environmental issues associated with each:
2
“Efforts to minimize pollution were once thought to inevitably increase business costs--and to occur only because of regulation and taxes. Today there is a growing consensus that major improvements in environmental performance can often be achieved with better technology at nominal incremental cost and can even yield net cost savings through enhanced resource utilization, process efficiency, and quality.”3 There is increasing evidence that providing more efficient processes coupled with a reduction in waste and pollution will reduce operating and material costs as a result. This concept is known as
It is no longer possible for companies to ignore the environmental impact of their operations as they need to respond to changing shareholder demands in order to remain profitable.
Investors are becoming more interested in a company’s environmental performance, “aware that the firms understand and manage their environmental impacts are best positioned to benefit from strategic opportunities.”1
According to research published in the Harvard Business Review in 2009, 75 percent of U.S. workforce entrants see social responsibility and environmental commitment as important criteria in choosing employers. This adds pressure to operational managers in terms of environmental practices if they want to attract employees
Customers are going ‘green’ and companies must meet their requirements or they will have to face the consumer backlash if their standards do not meet their sustainable requirements
More often than not it is operations management that is the centre of major environmental disasters causing pollution for example, as many of the cases are and for a range of reasons. Further on in the environmental scope we will analyze how an operational failure led to a pollution catastrophe causing headlines around the world. The main areas of operations management are listed below along with some environmental issues associated with each:
2
“Efforts to minimize pollution were once thought to inevitably increase business costs--and to occur only because of regulation and taxes. Today there is a growing consensus that major improvements in environmental performance can often be achieved with better technology at nominal incremental cost and can even yield net cost savings through enhanced resource utilization, process efficiency, and quality.”3 There is increasing evidence that providing more efficient processes coupled with a reduction in waste and pollution will reduce operating and material costs as a result. This concept is known as