Today more than yesterday, the responsibility of companies is to include in their business the social and environmental dimension, in addition to the economic one, and the most effective strategy is “corporate sustainability”. The United Nations Global Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encourage companies to think in a long-term perspective, supporting a real cultural change in the business world.
The objective of a sustainable company is oriented in three directions: economic, to ensure the survival of the organization over time; environmental, through the optimization of environmental impacts throughout the supply chain; and social, turning its efforts towards the achievement of a general shared welfare. Sustainability must therefore be a project in which the company invests in the long-term period, which means building a value system for the brand based on consistency between actions and communication, leading to increasingly conscious choices by the consumer. Being sustainable is a structured, measurable, and validated strategic path; sustainability can be defined as the set of corporate policies that allow the company to pursue a virtuous combination of the three dimensions of sustainable development.
To conduct one’s business in a sustainable way means, first of all, to efficiently and strategically manage the available resources, be they natural, financial, human or relational towards one’s employees, collaborators, suppliers and customers. In this way, value is generated for the company and it is possible to contribute to the growth and socio-economic development of the communities in which the company operates. In order to conduct its business in a sustainable way, the company must find innovative solutions that allow it to understand and respond to the complexity of the context in which it operates, thus combining economic growth, social development and protection of the natural heritage.
However, in order to succeed it is essential that companies and entrepreneurs adopt a systemic, inclusive, and transparent approach. The objective is to create the consolidation of sustainable practices within the company. For this reason, it is important that companies take a path, made up of small steps, thus laying the foundations for a real transformation of the company culture from a sustainable perspective. In this scenario, creativity and art become for the entrepreneur the best tool for understanding reality representing an engine of continuous growth.
Author: Germana Girelli
