The changing dynamics of the business and growing pressure from the stakeholders has forced the organisations to take another important aspect into their boardroom – sustainability. Investment in technological interventions is a must to enable sustainability within the business. The problem faced by the businesses is to find the right balance between their profits and technological investment to achieve sustainability. The current study focuses on understanding the factors which affect investment in sustainability using the multi-criteria approach of fuzzy-DEMATEL approach. The methodology is utilised to depict the context-specific link between the factors to aid the business managers in making right decisions. The results demonstrate that the factors such as commitment of top management (TS1), cost of training and development (TS2), cost of regulatory audits and fines (TS5), cost of subsidies and incentives (TS6), and cost of searching for suitable partners (TS9) are crucial for the incorporation of sustainability.
Top1. Introduction
The world has been seeing an upsurge in technological interventions over past few decades. While the industry has led to this upsurge through research and development, it also provides avenues for large scale applications of various technological interventions. Mature organisations, start-ups with funding and entrepreneurial ventures without external funding, all exploit technology for some benefit depending upon their financial capabilities. However, the role technology plays in helping organisations become truly sustainable on environmental and social parameters is not very apparent, as organisations do not invest in technology solely for the purpose of achieving sustainability. Economic performance is the purpose of an organisation’s existence. Conceptually and practically, an organisation exists to maximise the benefits for its stakeholders. However, in the present context, the stakeholder pressure has forced the organisations to take another important aspect into their boardroom – Sustainability. In 1987, World Commission on Environment and Development, in its report Our Common Future also known as the Brundtland Report defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Since then, many efforts to conceptualise and achieve the objective of sustainability were taken. The most widely accepted conceptualisation is the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) which says that true sustainability is achieved only when efforts are directed toward environmental, social and economic development (Melville, 2010; Seuring & Muller, 2008). In the year 2016, United Nations also brought forward the twelve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide an objective and direction for the nations to foray on the road to sustainability. Businesses are the pillars of development in any economy. Hence, they must also take the onus of making their operations sustainable on the three pillars of TBL. Today organisations are not left with any choice but to take initiatives to enhance their environmental and social sustainability.
Despite the fact that industrial development and advancement of technology has degraded the ecological conditions surrounding us, businesses alone cannot be held responsible and accountable to bring about a change in our surrounding ecological conditions (Van den Berg & De Langen, 2017). This is an era of sustainable collaborative advantage. The organisations are dependent on many external organisations like outsourcing partners, vendors, logistics service providers, etc. to carry out their operations effectively and efficiently. At present the efforts by organisations to achieve environmental sustainability of their operations are isolated. This is probably the reason why the results of these efforts are not visible. It is high time that various organisations collaborate to see the results of their efforts towards achieving environmental sustainability. Collaboration will not only help in easily materialising the results of efforts towards sustainability, it will also reduce the financial pressure on an individual organisation to do so.
Another aspect that must be taken into account are the ways and means by which the results of efforts implemented to achieve widespread benefits of sustainability efforts while not forcing the organisations to compromise with their economic sustainability. The chapter started with a discussion on technological interventions and that is the answer (Lee & Wu, 2014). Technological interventions specific to industries are a must to enable environmental sustainability of their operations without compromising with the profits. Research is abundant with literature that supports this belief. However, still organisations struggle to find the right balance between their profits and technological investment to achieve sustainability. The present investigation aimed to tackle two primary research inquiries:
- 1.
What are the major factors that affect an organisations decision to invest in technology for sustainability?
- 2.
What are the interrelationship between the factors that affect an organisations decision to invest in technology for sustainability?