BUS293 : Organizational Theory and Behavior : Organizational Structure

1. What is environmental sustainability and how will it influence organisational behaviour?

2. Critically analyse and discuss how the concepts of “Learning (Chapter 4) will affect the organisation’s transition to becoming or remaining an environmentally sustainable business.

Introduction:

The term sustainability is defined as the capability of an entity to continue a behavior for an indefinite period of time. Environmental sustainability is defined as the position in which the demands of the people that are placed on the environment can be fulfilled without affecting it harmfully (Kates and Robert, 2018). It is to be done by recycling and reusing of resources along with the usage of renewable resources. This is a major area that all the business organizations are working on and introducing appropriate changes in the organizational structure and operations. The paper aims to discuss about the influence of environmental sustainability on the organizational structure of Caltex Oil Company.

About the Company:

Caltex Oil Company was established in 1900 ("Caltex Australia | Fuels, Convenience Retail & Lubricants", 2018). The company started in the late 1940s when the Australian importer of oil, Ampol was enlisted on the Australian Securities Exchange ("Our History,” 2018). Both the companies inaugurated their refineries in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. They were fierce competitors in the market and merged with each other in 1995 to become a bigger organization. Caltex Oil Company is the biggest importer and provider of fuel in Australia. They supply one third of the total transport fuel of Australia. Furthermore, they provide fuel to every sector of the different industries including retail, agriculture, mining, transport, aviation, and enterprises, marine, automotive and also to the government.

Discussion:

Environmental sustainability and its influence on organizational behavior

Environmental sustainability is defined as the position in which the demands of the people that are placed on the environment can be fulfilled without affecting it harmfully. It is to be done by recycling and reusing of resources along with the usage of renewable resources. Some of the other steps included for the achievement of environmental sustainability are the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, prevention of the destruction of rainforests, combination of contraction in the use of carbon and convergence for the reduction of carbon footprints across the world within safe operating limits (McKinnon, Alan, Michael Browne, Anthony Whiteing 2015). Environmental sustainability has an influence on the behavior of the organization too. The organizations will implement policies of operation that are friendly to the environment. The behavior of the employees as a measure to protect the environment is termed as Employee green Behavior or EGB. The context factors involved in the implementation of measures of environmental sustainability in an organization include institutional factors such as normative measures, regulatory factors and cognitive and cultural pressures (Gkioni, Stella 2015). The organizational factors include policies implemented by the organization, the leadership of the organization and attitude of the management towards the employees to protect the environment and the activities practiced by the management and the employees alike for the same. The target to achieve environmental sustainability by an organization benefits the organization in many ways. Firstly, it helps the organization to save up costs because the operations of the organization become eco-friendly (Robertson, Jennifer, and Julian 2013, 176-194). There is also an opportunity of a competitive advantage over the competitors of an organization because implantation of environment friendly ways helps in building goodwill of the company. The leaders also become effective in an organization that practices environmental sustainability. The future intentions of the employees also improves along with their social norms. The company that is considered for this paper, Caltex Oil Company has taken up several methods to achieve environmental sustainability. Firstly, the company has been recording the usage of energy and emission of greenhouse gas across the organization which is in compliance with the new National Greenhouse Emissions Reporting System. Secondly, Caltex has taken up measures to reduce the carbon emissions caused by the company with the help of Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In addition, the company has introduced energy efficiency opportunities program which assesses the efficiency of energy across their refining operations. Moreover, Caltex has been supplying biofuels to the customers. Furthermore, the introduction of recycled water has been made in the refineries of the company. Finally, the underground tanks were repaired and replaced in order to stop the wastage of water from damaged tanks.

Analysis of impact of learning and self-management on the organizational behavior of becoming environmentally sustainable business

The chapter of the book talks about the impact and importance of learning and self-management on the behavior of the people of the organization. There are several methods of reinforcement of behavior of employees towards the organizational policies and at the same time, the environment. All of the methods are equally important for the protection of the needs of the environment or any of the norms of the organization. There are four reinforcement strategies that are required to modify the organizational behavior (Delmas, Magali, and Sanja 2013, 230-252). They are positive ways of reinforcement, negative ways of reinforcement, punishment and extinction. The positive ways of reinforcement methods include the encouragement of desirable behavior of an employee. In this case, positive reinforcement includes the encouragement of the behavior of the employees who support and practice environment friendly ways of operation (Montiel, Ivan, and Javier 2014, 113-139). Similarly, punishment and extinction are the ways of managing and administering the consequences of negative reinforcement and behavior. Furthermore, it is the self-management of the employees that is important for the organization to retain or become an environmentally sustainable business. Caltex Oil has taken up serious measures to monitor their impact on the environment and implementing measures of achieving a sustainable environment. They are aiming to manufacture cleaner fuels, the usage of which will help in the reduction of carbon emission across Australia. The organization has taken up measures to monitor the change in climate and is working on controlling the damage caused due to the operations of the company. Furthermore, the reduction of carbon emissions and the introduction of manufacture of biofuels are also considered as steps of achieving a sustainable environment.

Recommendation:

By analysis of the aforementioned factors and methods of attaining and retaining environmental sustainability, the following recommendations can be made for Caltex Oil Company for achieving a similar structure of business.

1. The company should invent and implement ways to reduce the carbon emission that is generated from their refineries as a result of the extraction of oil. It should focus more on using renewable resources (Epstein, Marc 2018). Furthermore, Caltex Oil Company should introduce and shift to the renewable resource sector and provide renewable resources to Australia as an alternative to fossil fuel.
2. There should be policies strategized and implemented by the organization to make the employees take up environment friendly ways of working which includes saving of energy and reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other gases which can come from the cars of the employees (Eccles, Robert, Ioannis et al. 2014, 2835-2857). Therefore, the employees are encouraged to take up environment friendly ways of travel.

References:

"Our History". 2018. Caltex. https://www.ampol.com.sg/our-history.

Caltex Australia | Fuels, Convenience Retail & Lubricants. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.caltex.com.au/

Delmas, Magali A., and Sanja Pekovic. "Environmental standards and labor productivity: Understanding the mechanisms that sustain sustainability." Journal of Organizational Behavior 34, no. 2 (2013): 230-252.

Eccles, Robert G., Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim. "The impact of corporate sustainability on organizational processes and performance." Management Science 60, no. 11 (2014): 2835-2857.

Epstein, Marc J. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring corporate social, environmental and economic impacts. Routledge, 2018.

Gkioni, Stella. "Environmental Sustainability and Eco-innovations: A win to win procedure. Implementation Strategies in Businesses." (2015).

Kates, Robert W. "What is sustainable development?." (2018).

McKinnon, Alan, Michael Browne, Anthony Whiteing, and Maja Piecyk, eds. Green logistics: Improving the environmental sustainability of logistics. Kogan Page Publishers, 2015.

Montiel, Ivan, and Javier Delgado-Ceballos. "Defining and measuring corporate sustainability: Are we there yet?." Organization & Environment 27, no. 2 (2014): 113-139.

Robertson, Jennifer L., and Julian Barling. "Greening organizations through leaders' influence on employees' pro?environmental behaviors." Journal of Organizational Behavior34, no. 2 (2013): 176-194.