By Swarupa Rani:
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
The twin crisis of economy and global climate change has planted seeds of change in the organizations to craft alternative business models to benefit our society as well as the economy.
A better strategy to sustain in the ever-changing market, a stronger risk management system with minimum expenses and maximum profit is what every business’s sole objective is at present. To shift to a growth that is slightly different requires a huge leap. Building a new economic paradigm keeping in mind both the economy and society is really a novel deed.
Every organization tries to be active in CSR activities. Well, that’s a positive sign of course. But where is the growth shown in CSR? Is the money invested actually reaping? Or is it just to show in figures how society-oriented the organization is? Serve for a different purpose — is the need of the hour!
To make a difference, locally based needs can be catered to serve the society as a whole. Not all global brands reach the end customers in the small towns. By doing so, not only the human resource of the local region will be fully utilised but also maximum local knowledge gained from them would certainly help in keeping the consumers satisfied. Also the cost that would have been incurred in making this possible without the local knowledge would have been much higher.
Crowdsourcing is when organizations outsource the work to a group of distributed unknown people instead of a specific body. It’s a cheaper way to get the task done/to obtain a solution. It also serves the interested people who would genuinely like to do that particular type of work instead of forcefully getting the work done by a specific set of people/body. If incorporated, the organizations would save a lot on the way of motivating the people.
Collaborative planning can help the organizations to save the resources. Using another organization’s readily available resources to produce goods/services is an excellent idea. In return you can share the profit or pay royalty. Because investing to generate that vast amount of resources would take huge money and effort.
As engaged citizens we have the power to develop ecologically sound and economically stable ways of living in the world. But we will first have to do the hard work of transforming our institutions, our mindset, and our expectations about what our economies are supposed to do. With the earth’s resources declining and dragging us to the pit of utter energy shortage, it’s high time to wake up from the fantasy that Earth would be feeding us with unlimited resources. It’s time to go environment friendly goods/services in some way or the other. Use recycled items for further production, use degradable products, try to keep environment green by planting trees, save energy, etc. Encouraging customers/clients, employees for the same would be a great initiative that we can do for our society as a whole. If we cannot make real changes for wellbeing in our own local communities, a global strategy is unlikely to materialize. Be the role model to revolutionize the ‘eco-friendly’ concept in the business world.