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American Journal of Public Health Research
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Clinical and Histological Features in Wegener Granulomatosis
Li Cavoli Gioacchino, Passantino Rita, Bono Luisa, Tortorici Calogera, Ferrantelli Angelo, Giammarresi Carlo, Rotolo Ugo

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Anne Lanham, Lillian Mwanri

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The Analysis of a Corporate Sustainability

Azad Abdulhafedh

University of Missouri, USA

Abstract: Sustainability means meeting our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. For organizations, sustainability is a business approach to creating long-term value by operating in the ecological, social, and economic environment. Sustainability is not only about environmentalism, but also about social and economic resources for social equity and economic development. Sustainability is a value shared by many individuals and organizations who demonstrate this value in their policies, everyday activities, and behaviors. For any company to be sustainable it has to achieve the balance between three forces (social, environment and economic). There are different ways a business can become sustainable, such as; reducing waste, preventing pollution, adopting clean energy, conserving water, greening the planet, using sustainable materials, making their products sustainable, and by adopting sustainable business policies. A growing number of organizations are integrating sustainability into their business strategy, realizing they can do better through sustainability. When companies fail to assume responsible sustainability, this would lead to issues like environmental degradation, inequality, and social injustice. This paper presents an approach to analyze the sustainability of a virtual airline company to demonstrate how the company is sustainable with the help of quantitative indicators.

Keywords: corporate sustainability, pillars of sustainability, environmental sustainability indicators, social sustainability indicators, economic sustainability indicators

Received January 01, 2021; Revised January 06, 2021; Accepted January 25, 2021

Citation: Azad Abdulhafedh, The Analysis of a Corporate Sustainability. Journal of City and Development, 3 (1). 6-11. January 2021. doi:10.12691/jcd-3-1-2

1. Introduction

Sustainability has three pillars; environmental conservation, social responsibility, and economic development. While most people associate sustainability with environmental conservation, it is also about people and the health of communities. Business sustainability, also known as corporate sustainability, is the management and coordination of environmental, social, and financial demands and concerns to ensure responsible, and ongoing success. For any company to be sustainable it has to achieve the balance between three forces (social, environment and economic). The literature reveals some definitions of sustainability. For instance, we can see quotes of Guy Dauncey defines that “Sustainability is a condition of existence which enables the present generation of humans and other species to enjoy social wellbeing, a vibrant economy, and a healthy environment, and to experience fulfillment, beauty and joy, without compromising the ability of future generations of humans and other species to enjoy the same” [1]. The words on sustainable development by Brundtland “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. It contains two key concepts “The concept of needs, to which overriding priority should be given” and “The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs” [2]. The enterprise in general has to lead their business in sustainable manner for wellbeing of the society and people. The welfare of the people lives and environment for the future has to be promoted by every enterprises business strategy. The future of the environment depends on the present eco-system cycle, and if there is an imbalance occurs it results in destruction of the environment.

2. The Goals of Sustainability

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals are listed below [3]:

1. No Poverty

2. Zero Hunger

3. Good Health and Well-being

4. Quality Education

5. Gender Equality

6. Clean Water and Sanitation

7. Affordable and Clean Energy

8. Decent Work and Economic Growth

9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

10. Reduced Inequality

11. Sustainable Cities and Communities

12. Responsible Consumption and Production

13. Climate Action

14. Life Below Water

15. Life on Land

16. Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

17. Partnerships to achieve the Goal

The SDGs included amongst other things [4,5,6,7]:

• The end of poverty and hunger,

• Better standards of education and healthcare,

• Water quality and better sanitation,

• Achieving gender equality,

• Sustainable economic growth while promoting jobs and stronger economies,

• All of the above and more while tackling the effects of climate change, pollution and other environmental factors that can harm people's health, livelihoods, and lives.

3. The Benefits of Corporate Sustainability

The three pillars of corporate sustainability; economic, social, and environmental work together to help organizations strive for more sustainable practices. Adopting sustainable practices might help in improved brand image, reduced costs, happier shareholders, and increased productivity. Below are some benefits of corporate sustainability [8,9,10,11,12]:

• Improves Brand Image and Competitive Advantage

Being a sustainable business can improve the corporate brand image because customers are more aware of environmental concerns, so they are likely to buy from the organization that is known for practicing sustainability. Therefore, it helps to get a competitive advantage.

• Increases Production and Minimizes Costs

Sustainability can help in saving overhead costs. For example, when replacing the basic lighting with more energy efficient lighting, it will make a great difference to the energy bills. These practices may seem expensive, but they will justify the corporate investment in the future.

• Improves Employee Retention and Talent Acquisition

Employees want to work with organizations that support and operate corporate environmental programs, because they feel that their organizations should do good things for the environment and communities. Simply, they want to stay with the company that cares.

• Helps in Attracting Investments and Funds

Organizations with sustainability plans are likely to attract investors more than those who do not have. Sustainability almost always means new markets and investments.

• Management of Business Risks

Many companies realize the value of proactively anticipating, managing, and responding to business risks. With a corporate sustainability strategy as the guide, a company can be ready for changing expectations, trends, drivers, and regulations in their industry. This helps to ensure that potential risks and liabilities are accounted for along the company’s entire value chain, decreasing the severity of those risks, and even achieving preferred status for financing and insurance in the process.

4. The Ways Business Sustainability can be Achieved

• Aligning strategy and sustainability:

The management team of the business needs to make sure that the strategy of the company and the sustainability efforts are aligned. If divergence occurred between strategy and sustainability, then it would make the sustainability efforts fragile, lacking real commitment and effectiveness. This occurs with the transition of the business strategy from focusing just on creating shareholder value to creating shared value. It involves incorporating financial returns into the corporate strategy [13].

• Considering compliance to sustainability first, then competitive advantages:

Businesses need to address compliance first, then looking for advantages. Compliance might relate to regulations in waste management, pollution, and energy efficiency as well as human rights and labor responsibility. Compliance could also concern investors. Investors tend to divest from companies with poor sustainability performance. Many companies struggle with quantifying the return on their sustainability investments. With regards to areas of competitive advantage, companies need to link sustainability to their business activities [14].

• Transparency for improving sustainability practices:

Transparency in an open environment in the company as well as with the community will improve performance. The only way for companies to accomplish transparency is through open communications with all key stakeholders built on high levels of information disclosure, clarity, and accuracy, as well as an openness to recognizing faults and improving practices. Transparency might include engaging the Board in collaborations with key stakeholders such as NGOs, governments, and international Organizations [15,16].

• Engaging the ecosystem:

Collaboration is critical for efficient sustainability practices, in particular in solving crises and in shaping broader solutions within the ecosystem. Engaging the ecosystem would contribute to supporting local communities, and even looking at additional business sourcing.

• Allocating Resources to Expand Sustainability and Engaging Employees:

If the business is to achieve sustainability, it must set aside resources to accomplish its goals. While sustainability should be the responsibility of every member of an organization. A green team can be assigned the task of initiating sustainability projects and objectives to get everyone on board with sustainability goals.

• Measuring and Reviewing Results

After implementing the sustainability initiatives, the corporate needs to have a system in place to measure how well things are progressing to achieve the sustainability targets.

5. An Analysis Approach of a Successful Corporate Sustainability

In order to analyze the sustainability of a business, we need to assess different quantitative indicators to see if the business is on the right path towards sustainability. In this example, we will consider a virtual global airline company that operate the fleets of Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 aircraft. The company’s main activity is the provision of commercial air transportation services.

6. Sustainability Indicators of the Company

The sustainability indicators are drawn from the Air Transportation Association (ATA), the International Air Transportation Association (IATA), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The ATA, IATA, and ICAO are agencies responsible for maintaining sustainability in the Aviation sectors. The other sustainability drivers include corporate social responsibility of Airline industry. The airline is a company which concentrates on Eco-Environment practices in order to maintain sustainability with the environment and the usage of technologies to reduce burning of fuel and to minimize the carbon-di-oxide emission [17,18,19,20,21]. The airline maintains sustainability by flying younger aircrafts and has an emission record of 25% less than the emission mentioned by International Air Transportation Association (IATA). Sustainability can be achieved by focusing on emission and fuel savings, air traffic control, supply chain and by recycling the wastes. The environment policy of the airline focuses on developing sustainable and eco-efficiency in air and in the ground. The policy includes creation of environment program team to govern the eco-environment practices of the company. The environment policy includes creation specific policies relating to waste management, recycling, water consumption and sustainable ground transport system to promote sustainability. The company plans to use efficient aircrafts for long range flight operations.

7. Environmental Sustainability Indicators of the Company

1. Carbon Emissions and Climate Change

• Maintaining a young, fuel-efficient fleet.

• Implementing fuel-saving operational techniques, both in the air and on the ground.

• Working with air traffic management providers to establish fuel-saving routes

• Supporting the development of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme (CORSIA)

• Encouraging the development of supply chain for sustainable aviation fuel.

• Optimizing ground transportation planning.

• Purchasing, electric and hybrid ground equipment to replace diesel-fueled equipment.

2. Noise Control and Local Air Quality:

• Operating a young, technologically-advanced aircraft fleet.

• Using operational procedures to reduce aircraft noise and emissions.

• Introducing electric ground equipment.

• Switching off aircraft auxiliary power units (APUs) where ground power air is available.

3. Materials and Waste:

• Refurbishing and repurposing equipment.

• Recycling from offices, operational facilities, and staff accommodation.

• Reducing resource consumption and waste.

• Designing solutions to reduce single-use plastic items and other waste from inflight service.

4. Electricity and Water

• Installing equipment to increase energy and water efficiency in buildings.

• Using a dry washing technique to clean aircraft with significantly less water.

• Installing solar energy in facilities.

5. Fuel Efficiency

Fuel efficiency of the company was 4.10 liters per 100 passenger kilometers in 2018-2019. The fuel efficiency is 25 % less than the International Air Transport Association (IATA) max value of 5.4 liters per 100 passenger kilometers. Fuel consumption of the airline was approximately 5,700,000 tons in 2018-19, which is more efficient compared to other airlines because of the usage of younger fleet aircrafts in their flight operations which has a lifetime of 5-6 years.

6. Eco-Environment practices

In order to maintain sustainability with the environment and the usage of technologies, the company uses programs such as, flex tracks, and single taxiing and ground electric power to reduce burning of fuel.

7. Carbon-di-oxide Emission

The Carbon-di-oxide emission of the company was 17,802,793 tones including passenger and air cargo and the efficiency of Carbon-di-oxide was 101.74 g of carbon-di-oxide per passenger kilometer. The emission of carbon to the atmosphere is lower than the base line mentioned by IATA, which is (136.5 g per passenger kilometer) and more efficient than other reputed airlines. The control of emission is achieved by the usage of newly designed aircrafts which has reinforced composite material in the fuselage layout that reduces the weight. The overhaul maintenance of the engines is done in calculated time interval to control exhaust gases to the atmosphere. The recent introduction of advanced engineered aircrafts like B777-8F and A350-XWB will enhance fuel efficient to control the carbon emissions.

8. Noise Emission:

The noise emission measurement of the company was (-10.07%) in 2018-19, which is less than the standard level of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The aircraft noise includes noise generated from the aircraft engines. The control measures taken by the company to minimize the effect of aircraft noise is achieved by running regular performance checks of the engines and continuous inspection by the maintenance engineers.

8. Social Sustainability Indicators of the Company

1. The formation of non-profitable foundation:

This foundation was established to take care of the children suffering from poverty from different locations around the world to maintain humanity. The company has funded many countries around the world for the welfare of the children and provided water facilities to some other developing countries.

2. The social works include sky travel miles:

This program was offered to humanitarian doctors to help the patients suffering from AIDS in some African countries. The welfare schemes also include the foundation of renewable energy in some countries.

3. The establishment of the Plant conservation program:

This program contributed to conserve plants and animals in the open areas of some countries.

4. Community relief projects:

These projects helped many communities in their daily life activities, like clean water production, rainwater harvesting and bio digester in some countries, as well as renewable power generations for the green ecosystem.

5. Diverse workplace:

The company has diverse workplace to motivate the workers with incentives to have them involved in their work. The employees are members of all environment programs to attain sustainability. The employees are provided with skyward plans to create awareness to the society about sustainable environment.

9. Economic Sustainability Indicators of the Company

The economic indicators of the airline include financial profits, innovation and technology, employee’s productivity, and corporate governance, as follows:

• Financial profits:

Table 1. Financial profits of the company

The financial results in Table 1 above indicate that the company is sustainable in their economic perspective as the operating profit increases gradually, except for the years 2019-2020 because of the uncertainty in the large scale economy that affected the airline market growth due to COVID-19 pandemic.

• Employee’s productivity:

The employee’s productivity of the airline rose by 5.4% in 2018-2019 because of the continuous development of the company.

• Innovation and Technology:

The airline focuses on using new technology in the flight operations to promote sustainability of the environment. The aircraft uses advanced technology in the Fuselage to have composite structures for maintaining sustainability.

• Corporate Governance:

The airline is owned by an Investment Corporation. The Corporate core values include service excellence, innovation, people welfare, financial strength, and safety. The core value drives the company to position of pioneer in the airline industry.

10. The Sustainability Proofs of the Airlines

The sustainability of airline is proved by using different indicators of the company as shown above. The other criteria are taken by the consumption of the company to show the sustainability condition through the following points:

• Passenger Fuel Efficiency and passenger CO2 Efficiency:

The Passenger fuel efficiency is the measure of fuel (in liters) burned to fly 100 kilometers distance. The IATA has fixed a maximum target to airline industry as 5.4 liters per 100 passenger kilometers to control the carbon-di-oxide emission to the environment. The airline has an efficiency of 4.10 in 2018-19 liters per 100 passenger kilometers as shown in Table 2. The efficiency of the airline is 12.5% better than the IATA standards. These values prove that the airline is a sustainable company.

Table 2. Data metrics related to passenger fuel efficiency, freighter fuel efficiency, passenger CO2 efficiency, and the combined efficiency

• % change of fuel consumption, water use, and wastes collection:

Table 3 above shows the consumption of resources by the airline company. it can be seen that the company has reduced the usage of fuel per employee by 22.8 to sustain the fuels for the future purposes. The fuel consumption of petrol, diesel, and gas for the ground level operations of the company has reduced over three years for sustainability. Wastes collection had increased gradually, and water use has decreased for the three years as shown in the table.

Table 3. Fuel consumption, water use, and waste collection of the company

• Recycling of Wastes:

The airline maintains sustainability by recycling the wastes from the onboard wastes such as plastics, card boards, aluminum cans recyclable products. The materials are recycled and used in the flight to reduce the carbon footprint.

11. Why Urban Sustainability matters to the Airline

The company considers urban sustainability essential to their business in terms of the following [19,20,21,22,23]:

• Aircraft

Airline’s policy of investing in the most modern, eco-efficient technology means they have one of the youngest fleets in the industry. The environmental benefits of operating a modern wide-body fleet include both reduced noise and lower engine emissions. All of company aircraft are fully compliant with the International Civil Aviation Organizations’ (ICAO) Chapter 4 noise standards and meet the applicable ICAO engine emission standards. The Airbus A380s are among the quietest large aircraft available and were designed to meet strict requirements at some of the world’s most noise-sensitive airports.

• Operations

The airline has invested in one of the best flight planning systems available, to carefully plan flights and optimize routes based on each day’s weather conditions, airspace constraints and the specific aircraft allocated for each sector. On landing, the pilots use idle reverse thrust (instead of full reverse thrust) and switch off one engine while taxiing where it is safe and practicable to do so to save fuel and emissions, as well as to cut down on noise. Emirates is supportive of efforts around the world to improve the efficiency of air traffic management and to provide more flexibility on flight routes.

• Biofuel

The airline spends billions of US dollars on fuel each year, by monitoring the development of biofuel technology with great interest. Biofuels are technically safe, cost competitive, and truly sustainable, with a viable supply chain in place from feedstock to the aircraft.

• Electricity

The airline has installed a one megawatt array of solar photovoltaic panels. The 2,990 panels form a roof over the carpark and are expected to generate in excess of 1,800 megawatt-hours of electricity and save around 800 tons of carbon dioxide every year. Their combined initiatives are saving more than 2,850 MWh of electricity a year.

• Reducing, reusing, recycling

The airline has made every effort to reduce resource consumption, repurpose items, and recycle materials when they reach the end of their life, which are essential aspects of a circular economy.

12. Conclusion

The analysis of sustainability of a virtual airline company is presented in this paper. It showed that the sustainability of the company is very promising. The analysis includes the environmental, social, and economic indicators of successful sustainability. The result reveals the steady growth of the company towards sustainability in the business. When considering the environment, social and economic context the analysis showed the company has stable sustainable strategy in the aviation market to promote eco-friendly environment for the future. The sustainability has been achieved because of the corporate goals that concentrates sustainable practices in the business. The relationship of company towards charitable organizations has a pioneer status in the field of corporate social sustainability. This makes the company to be a member of sustainable organizations in the world.

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