We believe that companies stand the greatest chance of long-term success when they have a business strategy that truly integrates sustainability and when their employees are highly engaged on both an intellectual and emotional level with that strategy.

Corporate strategy can be defined as the clarification and articulation of how an organisation will direct its limited resources to achieve a set of pre-defined outcomes, within the context of a particular system.  There are a number of key stakeholders within the system in which the company operates.  Each of these stakeholders has a particular role to play in the success or failure of the organisation in achieving its outcomes.

An organisation’s people (employees) are, in our opinion, possibly one of the most critical stakeholders in any organisation.  They are one of the greatest ‘capitals’ that a company has at its disposal.  Preserving and growing this capital base can only be to the benefit of the organisation.

A culture of sustainability (long-termism and systemic/integrated thinking) within an organisation ensures that strategic and operational decisions are made with the long-term success of the business in mind.  As importantly, such a culture also ensures that employees are able to see a personal long-term future for and within the organisation.

Creating a culture of sustainability (truly embedding sustainability into an organisation) requires the underlying thinking to be both “hard-” and “soft-wired” into the business. Hard-wiring implies that business decision-making and operating processes are revised to incorporate sustainability thinking while soft-wiring deals with addressing the underlying behaviours and fundamental levels of engagement.

The Moss Group, in partnership with Julia Seal Engagement Strategies is conducting research into how South African organisations understand and integrate Sustainability and Employee Engagement into their strategies and business practices.

The key research question that we are aiming to answer is:

“How well are South African companies integrating sustainability into their strategies and corporate cultures in 2011?”

The focus of this research is in the retail, manufacturing, financial services and tourism sectors, with an emphasis on large corporates entities.

We are still in the process of conducting the field research for this particular project and are aiming to complete by end September.  However, we have already had the opportunity to present our initial findings at two conferences.

Click here to view the related conference documents