What is the Strategic Role of the Sustainable Firm in Society?

What is the role, goals, and objectives of firms in society?

Business firms are important features for the human existence they in fact exist since the first form of human
civilization. In our society firms have a role that consist in providing goods and services, and this is essential
because they help people have what they can’t produce by themselves. So, what is really important for
businesses is to meet customers needs in order to provide products that people want and make profit selling,
but this profit should not be the only purpose, it should be used so that the firm can do something more or
better. In our society this purpose is not actually respected, because making money became the first goal of a
firm since the consumerist era started.

What do we expect from a firm and what are their responsibilities?

From a business we expect first professionality and concern for us as customers and we also expect that the
company follows the legal lines and that maintains a good environment within the company. That is because
if media and society give us information about the reputation of a business, we will trust those sources and
expect things that respect the image that we have about that firm. Another claim that we have is due to the
consumerism, we expect that a business would be always updated with needs and wants of consumers and
that would give us everything as fast as possible, there is no time in the consumerist era, if a new thing
comes out in the world, we need to have it immediately, even if we actually do not want it. Firm
responsibilities are strictly linked to our expectations, so a business must be concerned about the
environment and the workers as well as about the customers, both in a healthy and an ethical view.

Why do we need sustainability?

Talking about the health and safety of the environment we should know that the earth is not taking advantage
from this way to do business, the capitalism is destroying our planet resources. The problem begins with the
fact we live in a finite world, and we are doing business as our resources are infinite, but we are actually
running out of resources. In fact, only in the past three decades we consumed 1/3 of the planet natural
resources. If we think about the U.S., they represent the 5% of the global population but consume as they
were the 30%, they take resources from the third world and then use those lands to throw the trash. In
industrial production energy is used to put toxic chemicals in products, and as long as we use toxic
chemicals, we will have toxic products that can affect our bodies and also our planet. For example, one of the
chemicals used in industrial production is the B.R.F. (Brominated flame retardants) that make things more
fireproof, but it’s neurotoxic, that means that is toxic for our brain. Another limit of this way to do business
is that the pollution made by industries is moved to other lands or released in the sea, and what the
population do not take into consideration is that a lot of air pollution comes back. The consumerism
continues to work because of two strategies applied to the business: planned obsolescence and perceived
obsolescence. Planned obsolescence happens when a product is designed to be not able to work or to brake in
a couple of years, while the perceived obsolescence is based on changing the way products look in order to
convince people to throw away stuff that are still perfectly useful only because they have a different aspect
than new products. Because of these strategies, America comes up with a really high rate of consume, in fact
around 99% of the stuff bought in U.S. are throwed away in 6 months with all the pollution that can came
from that. So, we need to be more sustainable because in addition to running out of the earth’s resources, we
are contaminating the few that are left to us.

What can a firm do to be more sustainable?

Companies can help with the climate change, every day are invented new technologies that could make our
and our planet’s health better, but these technological advances often happen in monopolized economies and
that use it only to make profit. With the pandemic situation we were able to see how stakeholders could act
for the public good, so corporation do not have to stop making profit, they only have to switch their view
from a short-term perspective to a long-term one. This is important because leaves hope for the developing
of a better world, in which sustainability is the main character.

Government intervention or non-intervention, what’s better for sustainability and why?

Many firms see sustainability as a luxury that only the rich can afford, they think that if society wants to put
more constraints on this way to do business there must be other laws and regulations. There are two different
approaches to economy, one requires the government intervention, and the other one stands for free trade.
The government intervention theory is promoted by John Maynard Keynes that was a political economist
that believed governments have the power to solve the problems of capitalism. He refused to believe either in
communism or in other wisdom of free market, instead he took a middle position. He believed that what
holds back countries is corruption, knee-jerk policies, and shortsightedness, but if these three ills are
corrected, humanity can look forward to an age of incredible and lasting wealth. He wrote “Economic
possibilities for our grandchildren” in which he talks about the resolution of economic crisis. Classical
economy says that a free market will fix its problems regulating itself. For instance, in 1930 there were a lot
of unemployed people because of the lack of demand and classical economists said that once the free market
has regulated itself, the equilibrium would have been found. Keynes says that this process of self-regulating
might be too long, and to avoid letting people suffer waiting for the equilibrium, a government intervention
is needed. He criticizes the way governments deal with crisis, because they rein in spending, that means
postpone an existing problem. His solution is contained in the theory known as “the multiplier effect”. But
even if all Keynes said was appliable and useful, after the WWII his beliefs were not brought into
consideration. Keynes approach is important for sustainability because with the government intervention
companies will be forced to do better and not concentrate only on profits, so it will be a big step for the
climate change. But what is applied in our society is the concept of free market promoted by Milton
Friedman, that said “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, standing in the position for
which there is no responsibility to the society”. This is not an happy ending for our planet, because in this
way corporations work as they were alone, they do not care about the environment out of them, so they
continue to do business trashing the place and making pollution which makes our earth sick. With the
government intervention it is possible to create a circular economy that is different from a recycling
economy. Recycling is not enough because there are many things that we cannot recycle, for example a brick
of juice, we cannot separate the paper and the plastic and other materials while throwing away that brick. So,
a possible solution is letting the state or the companies itself retaking the products that we purchase once we
want to throw away them and reusing the materials in the production of other items. This is important
because it can really be the final solution both for the pollution of the trash and the exhaustion of resources.

How globalization affects human and earth’s health.

Globalization is a phenomenon that spread out in our society and basically means letting the different parts
of the world being connected as they were one big part. This can seem a very optimistic and interesting
pursuing, but it was only used to make more money and destroy biodiversity. This happened because
multinational companies decided to use natural resources as they were unlimited and to exploit underpaid
workers from the third world without even care about the well-being of these people and regardless of the
pollution and damage they were causing to the planet, because exploit people and not caring for planet health
was cheaper for them. If we think about places like amazon rainforest, which was regarded as the lung of the
earth, and we look how it looks now, it is simple to understand the effects of the globalization in our planet.

Is the slowbalisation helping?

It is simple to think that globalization can be stopped by slowing things down, but the phenomenon we are
witnessing now, called slowbalisation, only came up because the costs of globalization had become too high.
But even if the purpose of this phenomenon is not linked to the climate change, it can help with
sustainability, because it might create a less consumerist economy due to the protectionism and higher local
prices of products instead of cheaper prices of imported products.

What is the importance of the media in sustainability?

Media and communication have an important role in sustainability, because medias can influence the public
opinion with advertising or tv programs, or campaign on social media or public interview to experts to
growth the sensibility of people regarding the topic. We can simply think about campaign like Black Lives
Matter, or Friday for future, or for example the cruelty free campaign that led to a storm in online
communities on social medias like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok in which all the brands that did not have
cruelty free products had been labeled as butchers and no one wanted to support or buy the products of that
company. And this is important because can led to a world in which everyone is aware of the state of our
planet and of what can we do to make the world a better place.
Discussion, recommendations and conclusions of implementing a sustainability policy on
organizational structures and related marketing activities.

Even if I haven’t put the sentence “this is important because…” a lot of times, I tried to use a critique
approach including my opinion an my thought about the topic in this project.