Introduction
Contemporary businesses strive to be sustainable to be successful in the market. Sustainability in an organization involves being environmentally friendly and engaging in social participation to assist the society in achieving its objectives (Ellery & Ellery, 2019). Like other modern businesses, Maple Leaf Foods is working to become the most sustainable organization within its sectors. The organization’s leadership is keen on eliminating possible hurdles to achieving its objectives. However, some of the challenges experienced by the organization are ineffective leadership, a food scandal that adversely impacted its image, and increasing demand to be sustainable. Therefore, Maple Leaf Foods’ sustainable objectives can be attained by adopting sustainable leadership and appropriate change models.
Maple Leaf Foods Background Information
Maple Leaf Foods is the leading consumer packaged meats company based in Canada. The company was established in 1991 through a merger of Maple Leaf Mills Ltd. and Canada Packers Inc. It offers fresh and processed pork and poultry under the Maple Leaf and Schneider’s brands (Bansal et al., 2020). In addition to pork and poultry, Maple Leaf Foods’ meat products segment includes value-added prepared meats, lunch kits, and snacks. In 2020, the company obtained revenue of $4.3 billion compared to $3.9 billion in 2019 (Fawcett-Atkinson, 2020). The company is well known for being the most sustainable protein company. In addition, it is recognized as a carbon-neutral firm to be the most sustainable. As a result, Maple Leaf Foods is an organization that is committed to providing customers with quality and sustainable products.
Issues Experienced by Maple Leaf Foods
The Analysis of Issues Faced by The Company
The external factors experienced by Maple Leaf Foods are the growing concerns about the environment and societal issues. The meat industry has been marked as one of the greatest emitters of greenhouse gases. The company is expected to ensure that its operations do not adversely impact the environment. Maple Leaf Foods is faced with the challenge of ensuring that its products are qualified to enhance the public’s health (Bansal et al., 2020). For example, the company must ensure that it does not contribute to the prevalence of obesity in the community. In addition, the company must ensure that animal rights are applied in all the stages of production. The failure to adhere to these issues may damage the company’s reputation. Customers in the market now want to engage with socially responsible organizations and do not adversely impact the environment.
The other external issue experienced by the company is the structural rise of the Canadian dollar. Although external forces determine the value of Canadian dollar, it impacts the company’s performance. As stated in the case study, the rise of the dollar threatened the profitability and long-term existence of the company (Bansal et al., 2020). This drives up the cost of goods and services in the market. This is an indication that the prices of products increased. An increase in the price of products lowers the demand. For example, when the prices of Maple Leaf Foods’ products increase, customers are more likely to shift to alternatives in the market, such as plant-based meats. As a result of this, the company is prone to a reduction in sales due to a decline in the number of customers purchasing the products. This is one of the reasons behind the need for organizational change at Maple Leaf Foods.
Apart from external factors, Maple Leaf Foods experienced various internal factors. The first issue experienced by the company is a scandal regarding the quality of its products. In addition, the contamination of one of the company’s meat processing facilities contributed to an outbreak of listeriosis (Bansal et al., 2020). Based on this, the company is prone to reputational damage as customers doubt the quality of their products. The outcome is a decrease in the number of sales due to a decline in the number of customers purchasing the products. The other key reason that has hampered the organization is a lack of vision, as the company’s main guiding stone has been lacking. Without a long-term vision, the firm will lack a clear path and strategy to follow in the future. Therefore, the mentioned internal factors are among the drivers of change.
Ineffective leadership is the main contributing factor to Maple Leaf Foods’ challenges. The leaders of the company have failed to set the appropriate guiding principle to guide operations and achieve the anticipated goals. In addition, the organization’s leaders have failed to adopt appropriate sustainable practices. For example, the corporation has concentrated on employing artificial additives and antibiotics to address its food challenges and usability issues, raising concerns about its sustainability (Bansal et al., 2020). Business signs are weak in the long-term perspective, which could lead to costly delays and indecisions, as has been the case with the corporation. As a result, despite extensive efforts to reduce carbon emissions, the corporation continues to use plastic packaging, which is unsustainable.
Sustainable Alternatives Related to The Issues and Problems
Maple Leaf Foods should adopt sustainable leadership as an alternative to the current leadership. Sustainable leadership involves ensuring that the mandates and authorities for sustainability practices are assigned, communicated, and understood within the company (Haroon et al., 2019). One of the issues faced by the organization is the failure of the leaders to ensure that it achieves its sustainability goals. As a result, adopting a sustainable leadership will ensure that sustainable operations are effectively planned, implemented, and attained. For example, in this case, a sustainable leader will ensure that the company produces products that enhance the health of producers. In addition, this leadership will make sure that organic ingredients are used rather than artificial ones to produce quality products.
Maple Leaf Foods must focus on technological development and achieve relevant requirements in order to expand its sustainability operations. By adopting recent technology, the company promotes the efficiency of operations, reduces wastage, and promotes the attainment of quality products (Kalkanci et al., 2019). In addition, the corporation must develop a new sustainability strategy for its factories and place a greater emphasis on what is now regarded as one of the most sustainable proteins. With advancements in total technical innovation, any company’s working process might be made more environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, the company has been employing artificial components, which cannot be considered sustainable. This practice should be discontinued to maintain a high ethical value while remaining organic.
A sustainable alternative to a structural increase in the Canadian dollar is to adopt effective cost reduction strategies. The primary purpose of this strategy is to make sure that the prices of products are not increased to a level that many customers cannot purchase. Maple Leaf Foods are supposed to ensure that the products are available to people. The most appropriate cost reduction strategy is to track all organization’s operating expenses (Brown et al., 2018). Any organizational leader or manager should understand that materials used in the production process account for a sizable amount of the budget. For example, there is a need for the organization to consider adopting cost-effective strategies right from the farm to the production of its products. Therefore, the organization should find ways to obtain inventory at lower costs.
Recommendations
Even though the company is one of the leading sustainable corporations in terms of avoiding carbon emissions from its manufacturing process, there is still a lot that should be done to enhance environmental sustainability. Sustainability has emerged as a critical requirement for modern-day businesses. To achieve this, the organization should consider improving sustainability by defining a sound strategy followed by a quantifiable goal and raising awareness of sustainability. Furthermore, the organization must raise awareness about the sustainability strategies that the company intends to use to educate the staff and employees about the strategy. Additionally, all organization stakeholders, including suppliers, should adopt sustainable operations.
The organization should consider using Kotter’s change model when implementing the changes in the organization. For example, Maple Leaf Foods’ leaders may experience employees’ resistance to the changes. With Kotter’s change framework, the organization will create a team to spearhead the change process, develop a vision, and adopt an appropriate communication strategy (Galli, 2018). This will enable the leaders to eliminate any possible resistance from the employees and other stakeholders. For example, effective communication should be established to adopt the change in the approach of the organization and its plan to reduce the resistance to change. Therefore, using the appropriate change model like Kotter’s will help the organization effectively implement the changes set to attain its sustainability goals.
Conclusion
Maple Leaf Foods is one of the organizations striving to be sustainable. The issues faced by the lack of a sustainable vision due to poor leadership and contamination of products adversely affect consumers’ health. There has been a constant demand for contemporary organizations to adopt sustainable practices. Based on these issues, the organization introduces changes such as a sustainable vision statement and goal. As an alternative to the issues, the organization should adopt sustainable leadership. This type of leadership will ensure that sustainable practices are adopted to meet their goals. In addition, to effectively meet the changes, the organization should use Kotter’s change model to implement the changes. A change management team will ensure that all the stakeholders’ interests are considered in the change process.
References
Bansal, P., Montgomery, W., & MacMillan, K. (2020). Maple Leaf Foods: Changing the system. Ivey Publishing.
Brown, S., Bessant, J., & Jia, F. (2018). Strategic operations management (4th ed.). Routledge.
Ellery, P. J., & Ellery, J. (2019). Strengthening community sense of place through placemaking. Urban planning, 4(2), 237-248.
Fawcett-Atkinson, M. (2020). Are Plant-Based Meats Sustainable? Amass, 2(2), 42-44.
Galli, B. J. (2018). Change management models: A comparative analysis and concerns. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 46(3), 124-132.
Haroon, A., Sami, A., Rehman, S., Fahad, H., & Irfan, A. (2019). Sustainable Leadership Enhance Innovation: A systematic Review of Past Decade. Journal of Public Value and Administrative Insight, 2(4), 1-5.
Kalkanci, B., Rahmani, M., & Toktay, L. B. (2019). The role of inclusive innovation in promoting social sustainability. Production and Operations Management, 28(12), 2960-2982.