16

BARRIERS TO SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

“Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal

—E. Joseph Cossman”

Barriers to change are universal and changing the perspectives in business is no different. The dominant business perspective is that the business of business is to generate profits and growth. Sustainable business or triple bottom line business has many process, communication, and organizational barriers even though there is general awareness that saving energy and water has operational benefits. The barriers operating at person level, group level, organization level and societal level make the saving of energy, conservation of natural resources, and valuing biodiversity a difficult and time-consuming change management challenge.

There is confusion over what constitutes sustainable business. Some managers confuse sustainability with CSR and firms that have done some good things for the community believe that their business is then sustainable. There is also a notion that environmental initiatives are an expensive gamble on the firm’s part. It may be hard on the part of a manager who had been trained on the profit maxim perspective to think that their firm’s bottom line would improve through social and environmental responsibility efforts. There are other barriers such as anti-environmentalism movement, affordability, skepticism among business leaders, short-term thinking by business executives, challenges to global warming research, and so on.

16.1 BARRIER OF BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES

Business perspective is an individual’s view on the business, based on past experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions. Business perspective involves taking a broader, more critical view of experience, knowledge, and learning about the commercial and economic aspects and includes seeking to understand the link between business and life of people. Adopting a business perspective of sustainability, a person enhances the understanding of the economic, social, and environmental forces that shape the trajectory of the business that they lead. Aspects of business perspective include the systems, processes, and the structure nurtured in accordance with the beliefs that the business leaders have.

Figure 15.1 (in Chapter 15) of the corporate culture greening model (CCG model) illustrates the different components of organizational culture, which are involved in making an organization generally believe and act meaningfully to protect the environment through the business processes. In as much as a business perspective of sustainability comes from certain assumptions and ideologies, the unsustainable business perspective comes from certain other assumptions, ideologies, and corporate values.

16.1.1 Unsustainable business perspective

Business firms following the profit maxim and shareholder value maximization goal follow an unsustainable business perspective. Figure 16.1 depicts the perspective of making more output from a business, achieving economies of scale, and serving larger markets as the way of doing business. This perspective leads to depletion of natural resources, more pollution, and environmental degradation. The business perspective of generating more profits by producing more and therefore capture every slice of market is at the core of an unsustainable business perspective. This may lead to higher GDP for the country and hence each country also promotes inadvertently this motto. Individual firms aspire to make it to the Fortune 500 list and get counted as achievers. The present globalized world pushes consumption by engaging the best advertising agency, buy media time, sponsors the most visible sports events, in order to push more consumption of their products. The result is more pollution, more waste, more health hazards, more GHG emissions, and more resource depletion. This model of unsustainable business is aided by the planners in many countries who were trained at World Bank, IMF, ADB, or MNCs and the business leaders who had been educated in the top management institutes that subscribe to profit maxim views. To prevent rebellion and revolts to such an unsustainable perspective, several multilateral agencies such as FAO, UNEP, WHO, ILO, UNCTAD, UNIDO, UNDP, EU, IMF, USAID, ADB, and JIC fund many projects at grassroots level often in partnership with NGOs, thereby creating a robust civil society that has voices in moderation and their energy and effort spent on projects funded by UN agencies, embassies of developed countries and other multilateral donor agencies.

Growing in size and economy of scale and scope are pursued by all business organizations. In this approach, the ecological environment is not viewed as important; only business environment is focused. “Economic globalization” pursues this profit maximising, consumption maximising business perspective. To counter this approach, “Ecological globalization” perspective with icing of CSR/CER activities is put forth as a balancing action.

16.1.2 Scarcity-based business opportunities

An article, “What will the global 500 look like in 2021” in a 2012 issue of Fortune magazine states that “scarcity will be the new normal” when three billion new people will join the global middle class in the next two decades. This will trigger a consumption boom leading to higher prices for natural resources, and companies that use resources more efficiently will gain sustainable competitive advantages. Reducing waste, improving energy efficiency of buildings, improving irrigation efficiency, green manufacturing, and so on would be making more business sense due to scarcity. Pollution and environmental degradation increases scarcity in the following ways:

• Pollution of water bodies and ground water depletion creates scarcity for good quality water. This makes water a tradable commodity and its price is likely to increase. Water-saving appliances, water-purification appliances, water-efficient appliances, and water supply are already a big business in urban areas.
• Salinization, desertification, and soil erosion would create scarcity for good farmland and land prices would jump. Increasing temperature also would reduce good farmland for agriculture.
• Biodiversity depletion reduces the choice of crop species.
• Extreme weather and disaster events like floods, earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, drought, and lightning make areas not suitable for habitation, and pressure on safe lands for settlement would make housing land scarce.
• To produce more food, fodder, and fiber to feed and clothe increasing population, more forests would be denuded, making forests scarce.

Such scarcity would offer windows of opportunity for many products and services. This is another business perspective, capitalizing on the environmental degradation.

16.1.3 Sustainable business perspective

An enterprise that has no negative impact on the environment, society, or economy is termed a sustainable business usually called green business. Sustainable businesses eliminate or decrease the impact made on the environment by mining, transportation, processing of harmful chemicals, materials, and waste generated in the business process. Sustainable business considers in all business decisions the impact those decisions will have on the environment in the production, transportation, and consumption of products and services. Two global organizations that are working primarily on corporate ecological footprints are World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resource Institute. Without any erosion of the ecological capital, and if possible by enhancing the health of the environment and quality of life of all segments of society, the focus of the sustainable business perspective is to understand how profits can be made by business firms.

16.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS TO SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

“I agree that this is the best course of action, but I am not doing it” is caused by psychological barriers.

Psychological barriers stem from lack of awareness and an attitude of not learning the various interlinked aspects of the surroundings. This results in the first psychological barrier, which is the barrier to admission of a problem. There are businesses that continue to believe that they can keep on making profits disregarding the ecological environment and such firms suffer from this barrier. This leads to:

• denial or trivialization of ecological footprints;
• perceived invulnerability, believing that the risk is very small to the firm from environmental degradation;
• faulty conceptualizations;
• judgmental discounting—undervaluing future or distant risks; and
• debilitating emotions—tendency to optimism and fear-provoking messages may motivate avoidance and escape than attention and interest.

16.2.1 Psychological barriers to make decision to change

There are many psychological barriers to make a decision to change. Barriers to initial attempts to change come from the following:

• Ignorance or lack of knowledge (lack of knowledge of the 10 messages of WCSD and the 27 principles of the Rio Earth Summit).
• Habit (behavioral momentum)
• Low self-efficacy (feeling incapable of adopting clean technologies and processes).
• Weak place attachment.
• Dysfunctional attitudes (manager’s evaluative judgments about the environmental aspects of the business and impact).

Once decision is made to change the ways of doing business, there are still other set of barriers to effect long-term change. They are as follows:

• Cognitive and motivational drift
• Lack of perceived improvement
• Tokenism and the rebound effect—low-cost hypothesis and Jevons paradox (buy a fuel-efficient AC, but use it more; buy a fuel-efficient car and running more kilometers)
• Lack of social support
• Lapses: after the initial success in deriving benefits from a few sustainable development initiatives, managers relapse to the old ways, if there is no sustained societal support
• Conflicting goals and aspirations—flying frequently or using a large car by choice. Goals of showing the social status or economic power by travelling in a large car is in contradiction with the goal of saving the planet.

16.2.2 Methods to minimize psychological barriers to sustainable business

• Educate business managers about the challenges to the sustainability of the firm if the environmental degradation is continued.
• Exchange of information on best environmental practices by other business firms that are giving them sustainable competitive advantages.
• Through trade associations and trade magazines, frame environmental risks and state negative effects of not following sustainable business principles.
• Address faulty conceptualization of environmental issues through thematic business conferences and workshops.
• Articulate specific benefits that business firms will gain by having an environmental policy, EMS, and adopting CER.
• Elicit and address competing attitudes that interfere with adoption of EMS by business firms.
• Rewards and incentives for best corporate environmental performance.
• Involve trade associations and supply chain partner organizations in the green business campaigns.
• Providing knowledge and skills to managers to adopt clean technologies and how to design and implement an EMS.

Studying a course of environmental management during the undergraduate or postgraduate level by all persons who want to take up jobs in managerial positions, reading books such as “Walden,” “Small is Beautiful,” and other similar titles written by environmental stars, and attending conferences, seminars, and award ceremonies on environmental themes would help in reducing this barrier.

16.2.3 Psychological processes coping with climate change

American Psychologists Association (APA) has developed a model of coping with climate change. Since long-term climate is not easily detected by personal experiences, small probability events tend to be underestimated in decisions made on the basis of personal experiences. Many think of climate-change risks (and the benefits of mitigating them) uncertain and distant, leading to people discounting them. Costs of mitigation are to be incurred now and the benefits are perceived to be uncertain. The behavior that contributes to consumption actions, potentially releasing GHG, can be modified by psychological interventions. The individual predictors of consumption of environmental-friendly products are ability (income, education) and motivation (core psychological needs, connection to nature). Coping with climate change is an ongoing process of sense making, affective responses, cognitive analysis and reframing, motivational processes, and responsibility attributions for adverse climate change impacts. This process is influenced by formal and informal social constructions, collective efficacy, proximity, amplification, and attenuation of climate-change risks, and its impacts. Many psychological barriers stand in the way of behavioral changes that would help limit climate change. Using persuasive messages, economic incentives and new technologies in conjunction with psychological principles of behavior modification at individual level enable adaptation to climate change.

16.3 SOCIAL BARRIERS

Social barriers are created by people in their interactions and relations with other people. Culturally based attitudes shape social relations. Social barriers can take many forms depending on many personal attributes and the cultural context where one is transacting. Barriers arise from gender inequality, social stratification, social fragmentation, kinship rules, social mores, religious values, and so on. For example, customary gender norms and values lead to educational inequalities that perpetuate women’s lack of access to resources, control over decision making, and participation in public life. Social distinction between groups is used to perpetuate inequalities undermining efforts to manage collective goods such as water. Group differentiation, by characteristics such as religion, language, and ethnicity results in social fragmentation with certain groups perceiving themselves as having distinct interests. The social identities so created can act as a form of capital (a resource or asset) and can also generate negative externalities such as conflict with another social group. Conflict with another social group based on social identity can be an obstacle to collective action in environmental initiatives.

16.3.1 Gender issues in environmental management

Gender is an issue in the context of environmental management except in a few countries that are high on human development index or happiness index, on account of division of labor, patriarchal ideology, gender inequality, androcentrism, resource depletion, poverty, eco-feminist politics and the environmental movement. The same situation is likely to continue in the foreseeable future in more than 80% of the countries in the world. According to UNEP, the discussion of gender and environment is based on the following two precepts:

1. That gender mediates human/environment interactions and all environmental use, knowledge, and assessment
2. That gender rules, responsibilities, expectations, norms, and the division of labor shape all forms of human relationships to the environment.

Thus gender differences and inequalities influence the extent and nature of almost every form of environmental encounter, use, and impact. The two broad principles noted above manifest themselves in a variety of environmental relations and interactions.

Gender differences are evident in:

• the use and management of natural resources and unequal relationships in the family, and community that mediate women’s access to resources
• livelihood strategies that are rooted in particular uses of the environment
• knowledge of the environment, knowledge of specific resources, and of environmental problems
• responsibilities for managing, owning, or stewarding resources and rights to resources.

All of the above factors contribute to the gender differences that are evident in accountability, stewardship and action for the environment. Vulnerability to environmental change and abilities to cope with or compensate for environmental change are gendered. A gender-segregated work force results in different exposures to environmental risks for women and men. For example, men might be exposed to toxic chemicals used in mining, but women will be exposed to pesticides used in the export flower industry. Women may be more exposed to smoke emanating from the kitchen where biomass is still the cooking fuel. One of the cumulative effects of all these gendered relationships is that even perceptions of the environment and of the state of the environment are often shaped by gender. The issues of poverty, reproductive health, and sustainable natural resource use, and urbanization, women’s relationship with nature, women’s movements, energy, housing and industrialization are gendered issues in the context of environment and these are likely to remain major issue in the 21st century.

16.3.2 Youth in environmental management

Young people are, in many ways, the common denominator between the present and the future, and sustainable development by definition means meeting the needs of the present as well as the future generations. Hence, this common denominator, the young people, has the greatest stake in sustainable development. The open mindedness, activism, risk-taking nature, acting with passion, and flexibility of young people enable them to carry out many nonformal and formal roles in pushing forward the agenda of sustainable development. Thus the long-term success of sustainable development is dependent on the involvement of young people. In addition to their intellectual contribution and their ability to mobilize support, they bring unique perspectives to programs of sustainable development. Their active participation has to be nurtured primarily at the local community level going by the maxim “think globally act locally”. One of the primary ways in which young people can participate is in the field of education and awareness creation. Education can cover a wide spectrum of issues, from the efficient use of energy resources to sustainable consumption or educating the rights as consumers and their responsibilities as citizens. While being themselves educated and aware of issues and best practices of sustainable development, young people can perform the functions of enabling, ensuring, and empowering domains in the local community level, regional level, national and transnational levels. Young people can participate in task forces of youth and youth nongovernmental organizations to develop educational and awareness programs specifically targeted to youth population using a variety of formal and nonformal educational methods to reach a maximum audience.

Young people have an inherent capability of networking and the success of many social media is testimony to it. Young people will take up the challenges of sustainable development if other young people tell them about it and encourage them to join a project or initiative or blog. They will also take up the challenge and live up to it, if they are entrusted and given the right to decide and act upon matters concerning their future.

In addition to working in a variety of settings like task forces, clubs, and projects, young people can participate in sustainable development as full-time professionals in various ways. Youth can also participate in lobbying, protest movements against environmentally damaging projects, and policy formation of governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Since the future depends mainly on the power exerted in shaping it, society has the duty to grant young people the right to participate fully in the shaping of their future and educate and empower them to give a valid and intelligent contribution in this regard.

16.3.3 Social strategies to conserve biodiversity

Since biodiversity has widespread use and therefore is the target of over exploitation, strategies have evolved in the different cultures for the conservation of local biodiversity. The resource catchment area of the society was the determining factor in the culturally adapted biodiversity conservation efforts. Nature worship, sacred groves, flowers and plant parts as offering to the local deity, prohibitions in the use of certain species, and so on were the location-specific conservation-oriented practices of hunter gatherers, shifting cultivators, and horticultural societies. For getting a steady flow of the flowers, fruits, grains and so on for offering to the deity, those plants and habitats where they were growing are to be protected along with the water sources for the species. Many hills, ponds, river stretches, plants, animals, fish, and so on in due course must have become objects of veneration and therefore preservation by the traditional communities. The protection must have been originally evolved through an understanding of the economic and other benefits such natural resources had been providing to the indigenous culture.

There are various initiatives that tap on the human, cultural, religious, community network dimensions for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. Important types of social strategies are described briefly below.

1. Use of indigenous knowledge: indigenous people with a historical continuity of resource use practices often possess valuable knowledge about the behavior of complex ecological systems in their own local areas. They often develop a stake in conserving biodiversity and their practices of biodiversity conservation were built through lengthy trial-and-error processes. Conserving this knowledge and making use of it is an important component of social strategy helping conserve biodiversity.
2. Strategies for local participation: local participation can be described as empowering people to mobilize their own capacities, be social actors than passive subjects, manage the resources, make decisions, and control the activities that affect their lives. If the people living in an area or near biodiversity hotspots are sensitized to the importance and benefits of conserving biodiversity, probably they get involved in conservation activities and in due course a social movement for conservation of biodiversity can be initiated.
3. Use of emotional and cultural drivers: identifying the cultural drivers such as beliefs, social norms, habits, mores and integrating them in conservation strategies lower the communication and perception barriers.
4. Finding super-ordinate goals that have genuine appeal to local people and leads to conservation of biodiversity.

16.4 ENVIRONMENTAL BARRIERS

Ecosystems are dynamically stable systems that endure external impacts for a long time and adapt to such inputs. Thus it takes time for the effects of environmental degradation to become visible, and often it may not be visible as per our expectation. Thus, a company may be polluting air or water, but it may be difficult to visualize the impact of the companies’ subtle impact on the environment in the short term. Additionally, an input into an ecosystem at one place by way of dumping a chemical or drawing a natural resource may be seen at another place geographically as ecosystem functioning is complex and many of the functions in diverse ecosystems are not yet understood even. The effect on an organism, which is not yet discovered, by a pollutant from a factory is beyond the knowledge realm of the firm. However, such an organism that is impacted might be a very valuable plant or microorganism or insect for innovative products or services for a future generation, on discovery of its potential.

Difficulty in measuring environmental sustainability outcomes is another barrier. Many firms confuse sustainability with one of its parts such as air quality and assume that the firm is up to par since it has done technology upgradation to check air pollution and setup an air quality monitoring station with display board outside its gate for public to see. A firm may be employing energy-efficient appliances and adopt energy audit, but its water footprint may be very high. A firm may be putting up a green building, but its carbon footprint from air travel may be going up. Many entrepreneurs still do not think environmental degradation is a true threat, believing that nature will take care of itself or natural resources are available somewhere in the world, may be in deep sea or in another country. Such firms therefore keep on appropriating the resource units without concomitant provisions for restoration or reducing the use of global commons. Thus, one or more sustainability measure may be forgone in order to achieve another environmental goal. Often social objectives of giving employment to local people or providing housing directly conflict with environmental objectives. For example, the social objective of providing homes may conflict with objectives to preserve natural habitats.

Sometimes, site conditions may not permit adoption of some ecological sustainability measure in the event of overriding political or economic interests. If a site is located on a major aquifer providing sustainable drainage system, it will be difficullt as the drainage water may contaminate the water in the aquifer. Some trees may be felled for making housing for the poor and in the negotiation between environmental and social considerations, basic need such as housing get percedene.

Another environmental barrier affecting sustainable business is environmental stress. Environmental stress is environmental modifications or influences having negative or deleterious impact on the health and well-being of the life on earth and on the sustainability of the planet itself. Examples of environmental stresses are as follows:

• Elevated carbon dioxide and other green house gases
• Increased oxidants
• Reactive nitrogen
• Decreased stratospheric oxygen
• Higher mean temperature
• Increase in ultraviolet radiation
• Changes in timing and availability of water
• Loss of biodiversity
• Increase in invasive species
• Rising sea level
• Habitat fragmentation
• Acid deposition
• Salinization and desertification
• Increase in the noise pollution
• Cluttered natural environment and waste dumps
• Electromagnetic pollution from microwaves, computers, etc.

Discovered by Baron Einster Freiherr Von Pohl in 1929, environmental stresses have been found to be generated by factors in our environment as opposed to be regular stress caused by our activities within that environment. It is more closely related to the places in which we live and work having impact on our physical and mental well-being. There are habitats in the world that present challenges to plants in the form of water stress as drought, stress due to toxic salts in the soil, metal stress, and cold stress.

16.5 POLITICAL BARRIERS

Local political compulsions make politicians to argue for industrialization and infrastructure development disregarding larger environmental impacts. Business leaders are attracted to such location for making investments. Policies of multilevel governance make it difficult for reaching a political consensus at all the levels as political goals would be different at each level. Multiplicity of stake holders for any business and interest groups having dominance and more influencing ability may be having their way over the wishes and interests of environmentally less aware groups or communities.

In most of the countries, the decision on location of development projects, power projects, housing projects, ports and other infrastructure development are on political considerations. The political leaders are also under constraints to make decisions with pressure from vote banks or other dominant coalitions, overlooking environmental considerations. Grassroots-level empowerment of local people to safeguard environmental interests, vibrant environmental journalism, PLI before courts and sensitive green benches in judiciary are the panacea for circumventing political barriers.

Political barriers also occur in organizations because lower-level decision makers who are close to ground realities may not be able to incorporate their views on sustainable development in the overall strategy of the organization.

16.6 ECONOMIC BARRIERS TO SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

Companies in industrial sectors such as tourism, construction, mining, oil exploration, pesticides, fertilizers, road transport, car manufacturing, and deep-sea fishing have economic interests that are in direct conflict with ecological interests. For business firms in some industries, achieving a win– win situation on both economic and ecological indicators involves enormous costs of switching processes, technology, and business strategies. Affordability is thus a great economic barrier to sustainable business. Share/stock prices, revolving around quarterly profit results, put pressure on managers to improve financial bottom line, often at the cost of other two components of the triple bottom line.

Sometimes, a designer may propose a porous pavement for hard surfaces to facilitate natural drainage around a built-up area or in a park, but asphalt may be a cheaper solution to have a pavement, but the hydrological cycle suffers.

16.6.1 Incentives to minimize economic barriers

Economic incentives are employed to encourage environment-friendly behavior as the market economy expands. Economic incentives can be offered to install water-harvesting structures, install domestic sewerage, improve solid waste collection, effect common industrial waste water treatment, and so on. Raising water and electricity tariffs indirectly encourage conservation. Low-interest loans and tax holidays have been granted to the private sector for investments in clean technologies in many countries. Industrialists are given subsidies and incentives to erect windmills and other renewable energy sources.

Economic incentives use the price system and market forces for promoting environment-friendly initiatives based on a few principles as given below.

• Increase returns to activities that conserve or restore ecosystems or conserve energy.
• Increase the cost of (lower the returns to) activities that damage ecosystems.
• Reduce the cost of (increase the returns) activities that promote sustainability of the environment and natural resources.

Different countries have designed different systems of economic incentives as per their national priorities and needs, but with one objective of protecting the environment.

16.6.2 Economic strategies to conserve biodiversity

Economic strategies for biodiversity conservation make biodiversity an asset rather than a liability to concerned agents. These initiatives aim to increase returns on activities that conserve or restore valuable biological habitats as well as increasing the cost or lowering the return to activities that damage ecosystem health.

There are various types of economic incentives that have an effect on biodiversity conservation. They are listed below:

1. Disincentives: activities that deplete biodiversity can be discouraged by schemes and mechanisms that require internalizing the cost of use or damage to any species.
2. Indirect incentives: If the price of biological resources is maintained high in an open market, it is expected that there will be motivation by all the market actors to conserve biodiversity so that the economic activity based on the biological resources is sustained and everyone benefits.

Perverse incentives: Perversity is an unanticipated side effect of the policy interventions of the Government and is external to the policy domain of environment. When a policy or law is enacted and implemented in one sector, the resulting actions in the field leads to reduction in biodiversity. For example, tourism promotion policies, industrial policy, employment generation policy by making roads, and so on have unintended adverse impact on biodiversity. Any incentive so available that motivate actions that reduce biodiversity is a perverse incentive.

In addition to financial incentives, there are several forms of economic strategies such as bio-reserves maintained by private individuals, ecotourism initiatives, forest management agreements, land leasing with specific covenants, and so on. One of the widely used strategies is locally designed ecotourism projects that generate revenue, while providing employment to indigenous people and the funds so generated are used for biodiversity conservation.

16.7 POLICY AND ADMINISTRATIVE BARRIERS

Regulatory framework and local policy may be falling short of the best practices in sustainability. Regulators may be willing and knowledgeable to use their discretion to allow a more sustainable option to mitigate an environmental impact, but existing policy and regulatory framework is likely to make the regulator risk averse. Sometimes, certain stakeholders are not included early on, as involvement of some stakeholders at the right time might bring in more awareness, skills, or help in identifying a hitherto neglected environmental aspect. For certain stakeholder groups, the opportunity to incorporate or influence sustainability objectives into a business plan is limited to specific time periods. Landscape architects or green building expert architects are to be involved in the design stage and involving such a stakeholder at a later date may not be practical. Hence, oversight in bringing the appropriate stakeholder at the right time often is an administrative barrier in sustainable business.

Installing sustainable technologies and materials and identifying the significance of a range of environmental impacts require new form of knowledge and competencies. Such competencies may not be valued much in certain organizations and a neglected competency may not bring in desired results. There are many organizational and information barriers to embrace sustainable development and integrate it with organizational systems and practices.

Significant learning for management

Businesses still continue to believe that the business of business is to make profits by exploiting all opportunities and resources. Every startup business first wants to make money and get counted and noticed as an achiever in terms of quarterly and annual net profits and share price growth. Capitalism is designed to devour the commons. However, there is a realization at least among some top companies that environmental degradation is a true threat and is a common heritage that needs to be preserved. When large organizations convert to the cause of the environment, skeptics among business leaders start to take notice. GE has pledged to cut its GHG emission and aspires to be a leading innovator in wind power and hybrid engines. WalMart with its large number of retail stores, warehouses, trucking fleet, and merchandise has initiated steps to cut its energy use, waste and harmful materials and these steps will have huge multiplier effect in the businesses in many countries that supply to WalMart. Dow-Chemicals pursues innovations such as eco-friendly foam boards, roof tiles that generate electricity from the solar power, and water treatment technologies to be in environmental leadership.

Education and awareness creation is another motivator to break the barriers. More tools to measure sustainable businesses are being offered and rankings of businesses based on sustainability are also getting noticed. It may be a long way to go considering the various types of barriers; but awareness among managers about the different categories of barriers to sustainable business will be an eye opener. An awareness of the barriers among managers is likely to incorporate in a firm’s strategic plans some measures to break some of the barriers, when strategic plans are drawn up. When a few companies in each sector and territory gain savings in its operational costs, improve its public relations and be well prepared for possible carbon taxes or other disincentives for environmental degradation, a momentum will be built up sector by sector and territory by territory to break all the barriers to sustainable business.

Questions for discussion

1. What are the organizational structure impediments to sustainable business and suggest ways to overcome these organizational barriers.
2. Elaborate how barriers to sustainability can be overcome in a business firm through awareness creation efforts.
3. List the contribution of world business council for sustainable development in overcoming the barriers to sustainable business.
4. What are the initiatives an educational institution campus can take to convert local business firms to be sensitive to environmental causes?
5. What are the reasons for attribution of problems to individuals rather than to the organizational systems (fundamental attribution error)? How do these attribution errors act as a barrier to develop a green culture in a business firm?
6. List five enablers to the organizational adoption of environmental initiatives.

Exercises for better understanding

1. Make a book review of one of Lester Brown’s book.
2. Analyze the reasons and drivers that made a company sensitive about its ecological or carbon footprint in the country. (Published annual reports of leading companies that are in the first or second wave of environmental reporting give their plans explicitly on the environmental front.)
3. Identify the resource-allocation model followed by the company analyzed as above and discuss how the environmental context impacts the resource allocation process in the firm.
4. List the political barriers existing in the country for business firms to become green.
5. Make a critical assessment of the local political pressures on starting industries, housing projects and infrastructure creation at the cost of the environment citing two examples.