Global Survey - Corporate Sustainability 2011

8/6/2019 Global Survey - Corporate Sustainability 2011

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2011. Dhiman Deb Chowdhury Contact Me

All rights Reserved Email:[email protected]

This publication is intended for educational purpose only. Fax: 619-330-0662

Commercial reproduction without prior approval is prohibited.
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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 4

Methodology ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Demography .................................................................................................................................................. 6

What matters most in corporate survival? ................................................................................................... 9

Putting things into perspective ................................................................................................................... 16

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 19

About the Author ........................................................................................................................................ 20

Reference ................................................................................................................................................ 21


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Executive Summary

Corporations are now faced with multitude of issues stemming from both

endogenous and exogenous causal factors. Paradoxical to formulate a response in

this quandary, is often the pathological demeanors of the few. This immensely

detrimental behavioral construct is counterproductive, as it for the entity so do for

our common goods. Adding to this predicament is the contemporary debate of

balancing the need for economic progress and conservation of our common

biosphere. What otherwise construed to be far apart systems are suddenlydiscovered ensnared

and the concept is

partly thrown upon

corporations to

integrate in their

strategic formulation.

Furtherance to this

complex abstraction is

the perspective of

applied physics, The

Entropy Law. What

once considered the

matter of

thermodynamics is now

relevant to our own

survival.

Some scholars take this conception depicting the apocalyptic epitome should we

continue our increase rate of consumption and plunder of earths resources an

abstraction that goes against the very essence of economic progress.


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In contrast, others, with a bit of tone down, relying on human spirit and capability

to deliver solutions calls upon our common consensus on a formulation known as

Sustainability or Sustainable Development.

But the message is somewhat convoluted through a plethora of conflicting

strategies, definitions, mandates and regulatory measures. The obfuscation has

created deviation in the discourse of sustainability measures without addressing

systemic discord with sustainability challenges at organizational and societal level,

and societal and ecological level.

My quest to this abstraction is to find a simple yet powerful solution that uncovers

systemic conflicts with sustainability challenges prescribing an epitome ofbehavioral competence that benefit us all;at organizational level it gives the model

for long term viability, at societal and ecological level it formulates institutional

response to reduce entropy towards interconnected economic and biospheric

system.

This survey provides prelude to my research and depicts an interesting result. I

believe the survey result furnished herein will immensely benefit corporations to be

effective at organizational, financial, societal and environmental level.

Methodology

This web survey is ongoing and distributed electronically to different e-groups

worldwide. It uses a sampling technique known as convenience sampling(Lund,

2010) and efforts are made to collect samples randomly.

The survey questionnaires are crafted in four different sections: Demography, Work

Environment, OCB (Organ, 1998, 1990, 1997; Organ & Ryan, 1995; Chowdhury,2011; Organ, Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 2006) level and sustainability. The number of

respondents thus far participated totaled 134.


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Note: The survey is active athttp://www.dhimanchowdhury.com/research.html.

Please participate. Organizations interested to participate in case study, please

register through the same webpage.

Demography

Efforts are made to draw representations from many countries. No personal data is

collected. Respondents are requested to participate in the survey anonymously.

Among the respondents - 51% are from USA, UK-8%, Canada -8%, India-7%,

Netherlands 6%, Australia - 4%, Argentina -1%, Austria -1%, France 1%,

Grenanda -1%, Hong Kong 1%, Isreal 1%, Italy -1%, New Zealand 1%,

Switzerland -1% and United Arab Emirates 1% while 1% of respondents did not

identify their country.

Respondents from few countries e.g. China and Japan that were expected to

participate in this survey till date have not done so. I expect to have an improved

number of respondents within few months.
http://www.dhimanchowdhury.com/research.htmlhttp://www.dhimanchowdhury.com/research.htmlhttp://www.dhimanchowdhury.com/research.htmlhttp://www.dhimanchowdhury.com/research.html


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Interestingly, respondents from different industry segments and job functions have

participated in the survey. Industry representations include 19% from telecom &

technology, 19% - Consulting firms, 10% - University & Research Institutions, 19%

- Computer Hardware & Software, 6% - energy sector, 3% - Building &

Construction firms, 3% - Banking & Finance, 3% - Manufacturing, 3% - Healthcare

& Hospitals, 1% - Utilities Sector, 1% - Services Sector, 1% - Non Profit, 1% - Civic

Organization & Foundations, 1% - Food & Beverage, 7% - Other and 1% abstain

from answering industry question.


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Representations at Job Responsibilitylevel are as follows: 32% - individual

contributor, 26% - 1st & 2nd level Managers, 13% - Self Employed and/or

Contractors, 11% - Director or Sr. Director Level, 6% - C level Executives including

GM,Sr. VP CFO, CIO, CEO etc, 10% - others, 1% - Board Members and 1% abstain

from identifying job responsibility.


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What matters most in corporate survival?

Organizations that failed and organizations that triumphed, their success and failure

are corollary of their resilience to overcome endogenous and exogenous challenges.

Among respondents, those participated in this survey, 55% believe internal or

endogenous issues hinder progress or eventually become threat to corporate

survival. On the contrary, 45% believe external or exogenous issues hinder

corporate progress or become threat to corporate existence. Many scholarly works

however emphasized that internal factors are essential to corporate survival than

external factors. This hypothesis has been argued in many researches and ample of

literatures support the contention. Essential to this argument is the concept of OB

(Organizational Behavior) and phenomena of collective behavioral response. This

implies a collective behavioral reflection that a corporation depicts. The imperatives

of human elements in defining corporate personality cannot be underestimated.

Corporation is for that matter a micro society and reflects collective behavioral

phenomena of its coalitional biological agents (SBE, 2004; Vecchio, 2006;

Chowdhury, 2011).


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Few months before, I conducted an Opinion Poll through linkedin.com

(Chowdhury, 2011a) on the question, What is the root cause of Corporate

failure? Respondents have participated in this poll directly (sample size N = 85)

and also commented through various e-groups discussions (sample size N = 340).


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Around 57% of the respondents in e-forum discussions and 48% respondents of the

Opinion Pollindicated Lack of Effective Leadershipas the single most

important endogenous causal factor in corporate failure. Literatures sprinkled with

evidence of such findings and my naturalistic observation also support the findings

of opinion poll. Leadership is one of the important elements among few key

factors that collectively define organizations endogenous quality. However,

Leadership may itselfis affected by the corporations dormant norms and

normative that are often overlooked. These norms and normative are effect of

Organizational Behavior (OB) and rudimental sediments of the OB.

Since organization is driven by coalitional biological agents that are acting

collectively (SBE, 2004), careful consideration of human elements within an entity

is essential.


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This said is true when respondents are asked to identify single most important

element that helped their organization become successful, 55.32% indicated People

including employee and leaders are important while 37.23% identified Innovative

Products & Services. Organizations e.g. Google (T+D, 2010; Doing & Choo, 2008;

Mercuri & Pundrich, 2010) that have been phenomenally successful counted on

their people to deliver innovative products & services, create customer loyalty &

Trust and so forth.

Emphasis for those organizations that have been inexplicably successful was theendogenous quality a capability building strategy to develop behavioral

competence. An important way to measure organizations endogenous quality is to

examine some of the essential attributes such as Trust.


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The survey indicates an interesting phenomenon when Trust is examined in

conjunction with other important endogenous attributes.

Respondents who answered Yes to the question Do you trust your organization

to do what is right? also ranked their employers high (7 to 8 in a likert scale of 1

to 10; 1 being worst and 10 being excellent) Proactive and Creative

competence. In contrast, those answer No to the question ranked their employer

relatively low (3 to 3.5) in Proactiveand Creative competence.

The same observation is also prevailing in other questions related Profitability &

Shareholders Capital, Market Leadership and Innovation.


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The respondents who answered Yes to the question, Do you Trust your

Organization to do what is rights?ranked their employer high (6.9 to 7.8 in a likert

scale of 1 to 10; 1 being worst and 10 being excellent) in Profitability &

Shareholders Capital, Market Leadership and Innovation. Conversely, those

who answered No ranked their employer relatively low (4 to 5) in Profitability &

Shareholders Capital, Market Leadership and Innovation.

Similarly, the survey also depicts employees who fear their job ranked their

employer low in Proactive and Creative competence.


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Conversely, those do not fear performing their job ranked employers high in

Proactive and Creative competence.

In contrast, respondents who say they love their job ranked their employer high inProactive and Creative competence.

Similarly, those who say they love their jobs also ranked their corporation high in

Profitability,Market Leadership and Innovation.

These observations underscore that some of the corporations that have done well

at financial, social and ecological level seems to foster certain attributes of

endogenous qualities.


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Putting things into perspective

Thebivariatestatistical correlation analysis of survey result finds variables (that

depicts corporations endogenous quality) e.g. Employees who loves their Job

having strong Pearson correlations with Innovation [.522, Sig (2-tailed)


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Responsibility [.323, Sig (2-tailed)


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I find a better way to approach this is to begin with the implementation of a latent

behavioral construct known as OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behavior).

In this survey, I carefully crafted few questions to understand universal applicability

of the OCB in corporations sustainability response which I term OCBS

(Organizational Citizenship Behavior towards Sustainability) (Chowdhury, 2011a).

Interestingly, my global survey results when statistically analyzed depicts stronger

correlation (.580, P


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Conclusion

Addressing systemic conflicts with sustainability challenges is essential to our

continued existence but trying to achieve it through complex mandates, definitions

and formulations will be futile. A simple yet powerful formulation is needed it is

in essence a capability building strategy; a behavioral competence that brings

together human values and institutions.

The survey result shows OCBS as latent behavioral construct has universal

applicability and possibly capable of developing behavioral competence corporations

need. It allows corporations to formulate value ingrained response towards

sustainability challenges at organizational, financial, societal and ecological level.

However, survey result is based on a relatively small sample size and margin of

error would be around 8.47% till date.


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About the Author

Dhiman Deb Chowdhury is an entrepreneur and philanthropist by heart,

technologist by profession and author by hobby. He is working as the Director of

Technical Program & Project Management (R&D) at Allied Telesis. Mr. Chowdhury

received his MBA from School of Management, University of Liverpool and currently

pursuing his Doctor of Business Administration at Aberdeen School of Business, The

Robert Gordon University. He is founder of HRCBM, an NGO in Special consultative

status with UN and also serving as board members of an orphanage in Bangladesh.


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Reference

Chowdhury, D., 2011. Organizational Citizenship Behavior towards Sustainability (OCBS). Aberdeen

Business School, The Robert Gordon University.

Chowdhury, D., 2011a. what is the root cause of Corporate failure? A linkedin Poll. Available online at

http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicati

onId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps

Diong, A. & Choo, D., 2008. Transformative Innovation for Growth. Industrial Management. Institute of

Industrial Engineers.

Lund, 2010. Convenience Sampling: an overview. Lund Research Ltd. Available online athttp://dissertation.laerd.com/articles/convenience-sampling-an-overview.php

Mercuri, S. & Pundrich, A.P, 2010. Can slow thinking reinforce the results of corporate social

responsibility strategies? An Analysis of decision making process inside Google Inc.: France and Brazil.

Unpublished working paper. Magellan Research Center, IAE, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3.

Organ, W.D., 1988. Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA.

Organ, W.D., 1990. Fairness, productivity and organizational citizenship behavior: Tradeoffs in student

and manager pay decisions. Paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Management, San

Francisco.

Organ, W.D., 1997. Towards an explication of morale:In search of the m factor. In C.I. Copper & S.E.

Jacksons (Eds) creating tomorrows organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Organ, W.D, Podsakoff, M.P. & MacKenzie, B.S., 2006. Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Its Nature,

antecedents, and Consequences. Foundation for Organizational Science: SAGE Publications.

Organ, W. D. & Ryan, K., 1995.A Meta-Analytic Review of Attitudinal and Dispositional Predictors of

Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Personnel Psychology Inc.

SBE, 2004. Business, Science and Ethics. The Ruffin Series No. 4. Society for Business Ethics (SBE).

T+D, 2010. Work Example: Google. American Society for Training & development.

Vecchio, P.R., 2006. Organizational Behavior: Core Concepts, 6th Edition. Thomson South-Western.
http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicationId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps%20http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicationId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps%20http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicationId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps%20http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicationId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps%20http://www.linkedin.com/osview/canvas?_ch_page_id=1&_ch_panel_id=1&_ch_app_id=80&_applicationId=1900&_ownerId=2665170&osUrlHash=fKaa&trk=hb_side_apps%20

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Global Survey - Corporate Sustainability 2011