Sustainability appears to be at the forefront of business topics for the 21 st century. Over the past twenty to thirty years, businesses have changed their attitude towards sustainability from rejection to elevating it to a key strategic organization goal, based on the realization that sustainability is not only good for the planet, but financially rewarding. This development results in the need for frameworks describing how organizations can successfully manage the change towards sustainability. This paper provides a thorough literature review of the current stage of the development of such frameworks, as well as a comparison with assessments of where 21 st century corporations stand with regards to sustainability. The authors find that while valuable frameworks exist, there is a lack of understanding of whether and how these frameworks work for Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs). Building upon the existing models, this paper proposes a pathway for empirical research leading to the alignment and adjustment of these models to the needs of SMEs.
Effective human resources management (HRM) is focused on the only dynamic asset of the organization, its people; and, behind every business issue ultimately lies a human issue. Thus, the ethical adequacy of responses to all business issues rests on judgments made by individuals. HRM has a role to play as organizations address ethical challenges and as many strive to become ethical organizations. This article outlines three key responsibilities of HRM with regard to supporting an organization's efforts to become an ethical organization: (1) to establish ethical HR practices; (2) to facilitate the change process as all functions move to ethical business practices; and (3) to create cultures that build individual ethical capability and commitment to the goal of becoming an ethical organization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.