How can a company pursue sustainable development in order to Dissertation

How can a company pursue sustainable development in order to contribute to excellence competitive edge and financial position - Dissertation Example How can a company pursue sustainable development in order to contribute to excellence competitive edge and financial position? This research explores how companies can support sustainable development to improve their competitiveness in the light of the lessons from Toyota. This study mainly relies on secondary data to gather qualitative as well as quantitative data in order for meeting the research objectives. The findings indicate that Toyota strongly supports the concept of sustainable development to gain a competitive edge over its rivals. The sustainable business operations have greatly benefited the TMC to improve its competitive edge and strengthen its financial position. Toyota has been successful in making their customers aware of the company’s environmental sustainability efforts. The organisation increasingly relies on sustainability reports and social networking sites to communicate its sustainability initiatives to the company stakeholders. The emergence of globalisation eliminated international trade barriers and thus intensified cross border flow of capital, labour, ideas, and cultures. Evidently, globalisation and the resulted fast industrial expansion contributed to various issues like global warming, climate change, water pollution, and increased energy consumption, which in turn pose potential threats to the long term sustainability of the environment today. There has also been a notable increase in the population growth over the last two decades, and that worsened the condition. Researches indicate that world’s current non-conventional energy sources will be consumed out if people and organisations continue to consume the energy at the current rate. Therefore, it is necessary to limit the use of conventional energy sources, maintain water quality, and take other environmental actions to meet the needs of future generations. However companies like Toyota have adopted the concept of sustainable development t o drive environment-conscious growth and thereby enjoy wider market acceptance. TMC encourages and establishes innovative technologies to reduce the environmental impacts of its business operations and inspires local communities to support the company’s environmental efforts. In this context, it is relevant to explore how a company can pursue sustainable development in order to contribute to the competitive edge and financial position. 3. Literature review 3.1 A brief overview of Toyota Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is the world’s leading automobile manufacturer headquartered in Japan. The organisation was founded on 28th August 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda. As of 2010 Toyota employed 300,734 people worldwide to run its business and the company was rated as the largest automobile manufacturer in the world by means of production (Toyota: CSR & Sustainability News). TMC is a part of the Toyota Group and currently the organisation has presence in almost all countries across t he globe. Since its foundation, the organisation has been particularly focusing on quality because the management believes that quality is the key to brand loyalty. In order to ensure improved product quality, the organisations has developed extensive production line strategies which can make sure that production and assembly processes are in line with accepted industry standards. According to reports, one of