By Professor Yangfang (Helen) Zhou
Associate Professor of Operations Management at SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business
This article was first published by SMU City Perspectives on 7 February 2023. Below is an extract of the article. To read the full content, please follow this link.
Sustainable strategic planning: 3 ways to become a responsible organisation
Just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, it takes the whole world to make the Earth sustainable. We should come together as politicians, academics, corporates, consumers, and NGOs. It is only through collective efforts that we can protect our one and only planet that we call home, Earth.
In Brief
1. While Scope 3 emissions make up the majority of carbon emissions produced by organisations, it is often not addressed since firms do not usually have visibility beyond their immediate suppliers. Many outsourcing companies are also unaware of social and ethical violations that occur in their second and third-tier supply networks.
2. Organisations who wish to source responsibly can apply the ‘sense and response’ framework to gain awareness of the activities happening within their supply network before choosing an appropriate strategy to curb irresponsible practices.
3. Renewable energy investment and product stewardship are two additional approaches to sustainability that organisations can take. With the help of proper frameworks and effective strategies, companies can enhance their own value while reducing their negative impacts on the environment.
With the effects of climate change being increasingly felt around the world, many corporations are doubling down on their commitment to reduce their carbon footprint. The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol categorises carbon emission into three scopes. Scope 3 refers to indirect emissions from activities in a firm’s value chain, such as business travel, waste disposal, and emissions from securing supplies in the upstream and distribution in the downstream.
While Scope 3 makes up the majority of an organisation’s carbon footprint and should therefore require the most attention, the reality is that most firms focus their efforts on the first two scopes. This disparity can be seen in Deloitte’s 2022 Sustainability Action Report, where 61% and 76% of executives surveyed were prepared to disclose Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions respectively, but only 37% were prepared to disclose their Scope 3 emissions.
To read the full content, please follow this link.
About the author
Yangfang (Helen) Zhou is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at Lee Kong Chian School of Business of Singapore Management University. Her research focuses on Sustainability like Renewable energy and energy storage operations, Electrical vehicle adoption and operations, Agriculture operations, Food waste and food loss, as well as methods such as Stochastic dynamic programming, Financial engineering price modelling, Mechanism design, and Exponential cone programming.