The Concept of Sustainable Development and Employee Perception

Introduction

Background of Corporate Sustainability

During earlier times, the main objective of organizations was efficient utilization of resources and to capitalize on the fact that how efficient an organization is to convert its capital into profits (Jensen and Meckling 1976). The main role of the government is to make suitable structure which ensures that a leverage is built between this comportment of organizations in always achieving optimum amount of profits with overarching societal goals (Friedman 1970).

A lot of management associates and researchers have confronted this imperativeness of organizations on profit maximization. Their outlook says that organizations have broader accountabilities and not only achieving maximum return on capital. Hence, in this context this thought of corporate sustainability gained importance (Hanley 2000). The concept of sustainability development has emerged from the macroeconomics level. It is primarily based on three factors – environmental reliability, economic wealth and social justice. They are also popularly known as three supports of sustainability (Elliott 2005). Since organizations have full access to the productive resources of the economy so, without organizational support sustainable development will not be so much effective (Bansal 2002).

Background of Employee Perception

Fabricating an understanding of the societal behaviour from the information one generates from senses is known as perception. On the other hand, we can also say that perception is the method by which one can form opinions about other person’s qualities and characters. (Myers, 2004). Many debates have occurred stating that perception is the single most important determinant of human behaviour. In addition to that there can be no behaviour without perception. However concentrating on managers in an organization, OB theorists argue that, since there cannot be one specific strategy for analysing the perception of other people. So, ultimately it will depend on managers own ingenuity, creative skill set and contemplative abilities to handle perception (Rao and Narayan 1998).

Employee perception and sustainable development in organizations.

Unfortunately, this relation of employee perception and corporate sustainability has not been explored fully. Fewer empirical research has been done in this area which justifies or even mediates the relation between employees and sustainability. Neither in relation to employee perception of their organizations sustainable development or how corporate sustainability effect their everyday work outlook and behaviour (Aguilera et al. 2007)

Lately, OB researchers have comprehended normative theory in the framework of sustainable development. Specially, researchers have argued, if employees’ perception is that organization has followed the path of profit generation by imbedding sustainable development into their organizational procedures, this will have positive effect of employees perception (Rupp et al. 2006)

Hypothesis: Employee perception is positively related to sustainable development in an organization.

Many studies have associated sustainable development with perceptive, responsive and behavioural employee reactions (Becker-Olsen et al. 2006).

References:

1. Aguilera, R. V., Rupp, D. E., Williams, C. A., & Ganapathi, J. (2007). Putting the S back in corporate social responsibility: A multi-level theory of social change in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 32, 836-863.

2. Rupp, D. E., Ganapathi, J., Aguilera, R. V., & Williams, C. A. (2006). Employee reactions to corporate social responsibility: An organizational justice framework. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 27, 537-543.

3. Becker-Olsen, К. L., Cudmore, B. A., & Hill, R. P. (2006). The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on consumer behaviour. Journal of Business Research, 59, 46-53