Term Sustainability

The term sustainable business means that an enterprise has no negative effect on the global environment, while still striving to achieve all of their goals and tasks. In today’s economy more and more businesses are trying to be as green and sustainable as possible. Everyone is trying to meet the triple bottom line also known as environment, society, and economy, which is a spectrum for measuring organizational success. By having good interest in the well being of the population, it positively correlates to more profit for your company. Not only do companies have to be green, they also need a good structure and design to facilitate things running smoothly within the organization. Its top managements job to identify throughout the organization what their main purpose and goals are to be more sustainable.

When talking about the formal structure of the organization, it really depends on each division to do their own part. If the goals of the company are to be more sustainable it depends on lower management to design and manufacture products that try to attain these goals. The lower number of hierarchy levels the better. This allows for employees too have a better relationship with other employees and as well top management. I believe that a horizontal structure is the best design for an organization. This is the case because, it allows employees to work in teams to generate and share ideas to further improve the organization. Theirs always the case where some workers believe in a more sustainable approach, while others are approaching more towards just generating profits to keep the stakeholders happy. Both are respectable in different ways, but if the organization were to combine the two areas it would help to generate a more sustainable company. Sharing ideas and beliefs is key for organizational development.

The implementation of cross-functional teams was seen in our course pack reading, “Three Roads to Innovation” by Ronald A. Mitsch. The story was about the company 3M and how they encourage cross-functional teams to generate and produce products. It allowed for the company to be more sustainable, multiple