Are SME’s the new frontier in responsible business?

Businesses today are operating in a hyper disrupted environment. Companies across the world are experiencing and responding to this new business context in a multiplicity of ways.  Some businesses are getting disrupted into oblivion, some businesses are managing to hold on, while some businesses are pivoting their way into new areas of success.  

So how can we help business owners, managers and their staff operate successfully in these uncertain times while responsibly innovating into the future? 

Big business has been addressing a range of social, environmental and economic challenges for decades under the guise of corporate social responsibility (CSR).  Along with this activity came a series of international standards to guide, track and measure progress.  From the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the United Nations Global Compact, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Reporting Initiative and the International Integrated Reporting Initiative just to name a few.

These initiatives have gone some way to increasing the transparency and accountability of businesses across a range of industries and sectors.  The only drawback is that they tend to be used by large organisations that have the human and financial resources to develop them.  Small to medium enterprises (SME’s) tend to focus on individual environmental or social issues, rather than looking at an integrated approach.  And in the world of SME’s this makes sense, as they struggle to address day to day challenges, in order just to stay afloat.  But in these times of growing ethical consumption, where consumers are expecting that the products and services they purchase don’t harm anyone or anything along their value chain, this is not enough. 

The time has come for all business owners, managers and their staff, no matter the size or scale of their business, to look more holistically at their operations, and make sure they maximise social responsibility, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity at every opportunity. This means working towards a more integrated approach in managing their human and material resources, as they profitably produce their responsible products and services.

Adaptive Sustainability for Business Management is an innovative approach to business leadership and management that aims to encourage new ways of thinking that are able adapt to change, and to developing new skillsets that can address today’s complex social, environmental and economic challenges. Our approach was developed prior to the 2020 global business implosion, when companies were being disrupted at a slow burn, continuous rate. But that business context now pales into insignificance for some industries compared with the challenges of the CO-VID19 global pandemic, and associated business lockdown and hyper disruption.  

Adaptive Sustainability was born out of the need to create a practical toolkit for SME’s to carry out responsible and sustainable business activity, even in turbulent times. But in the current times of major challenges and change, our approach can be used by all working people whether in large, medium and small businesses, to either adapt themselves to the rapidly changing circumstances, or re-invent themselves in new ways. 

Adaptive Sustainability is comprised of a practical framework combined with an implementation process. Its goal is to identify, and where necessary create, tangible ways to function in optimal ways in today’s perfect storm of business uncertainty.  What is needed, and what Adaptive Sustainability promotes, are business owners, managers and staff who can see the big picture, who challenge the status quo, who take responsibility and take action, across a range of interdependent systems in their place of work and broader community. 

To find out more see www.bizsafe.com with load of information, downloads and online courses.