New Belgium Brewing (NBB) made significant improvements in the development of sustainability as a major part of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, there rumors that Belgium Beer wants to sell the company to willing buyers, which will potentially lead to the loss of independence and shift from its environmentally friendly paradigm (Carroll, Brown and Buchholtz, 2017). In other words, the next owner might not have sustainability as the primary objective of the business. This will most likely lead to gradual change within the company if the sustainable efforts go against the strategic goals of new management. It is important to note that NBB has already built the relevant infrastructure because it has invested in solar panels and lighting upgrades, a bio-digester plant for water recycling, and a partnership with The Climate Conservancy (Carroll, Brown and Buchholtz, 2017). Therefore, the overall change from the given sustainable operations will not occur immediately or in a short period of time, but further improvements might not take place. In addition, the current systems might be abandoned for more efficient ones, which might necessarily be environment friendly.
The most critical aspect of selling NBB to a larger brewing company will be the management change, which will have a direct impact on the corporate social responsibility of the company. It is stated that even mid-manager efforts can lead to CSR’s progression and state (Godkin, 2015). However, the main hindrance to the new manager’s potential abandonment of NBB’s sustainability efforts will be customer perception, which will dictate whether such change will be met with market segment loyalty (Alvarado-Herrera et al., 2017). The next step of improvement can be observed in delivery and packaging, which are key elements of the supply chain (SC). It is stated that it is possible to enhance both CSR and SC without a decrease in profitability (Hsueh, 2015). Therefore, the change in ownership might lead to a reduction in efforts, but the following upgrades to delivery will not hinder the cash flow.
The existence of a direct relationship between the measures taken by corporations to implement the sustainable development strategy and the growth in the price of their shares has not been statistically confirmed. However, in the long term, better management of environmental, social, labor, and ethical risks leads to better overall performance. Sustainable business development allows you to switch attention from obtaining short-term financial results of activities to ensuring long-term corporate growth. The process of interaction between a corporation and its stakeholders will be effective only if it motivates corporate management to align its own goals with the expectations and requirements of stakeholders. For a social contract to be effective, corporate governance must ensure that mutual benefits and benefits can be derived that provide incentives to all those involved in the business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, NBB made major accomplishments in adhering to their corporate social responsibility from the perspective of environmental sustainability. The company ensured that the majority of the electricity is coming from renewable sources, such as a solar panel. It also implemented water and waste recycling in order to decrease the out-system usage of these scarce resources. In addition, it is looking forward to reducing its carbon emissions through improved packaging and distribution. Although some aspects of these efforts can lead to undesirable changes in customer perception, such as canned beer, the overall issue of selling the company is a more critical one. The main reason lies within the shift of management and loss of independence, which will inevitably change the key sustainability objectives.
Reference List
Alvarado-Herrera, A., et al. (2017). ‘A scale for measuring consumer perceptions of corporate social responsibility following the sustainable development paradigm’, Journal of Business Ethics, 140, pp. 243-262.
Carroll, A. B., Brown, J., and Buchholtz, A. K. (2017) Business & society: ethics, sustainability & stakeholder management. 10th edn. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Godkin, L. (2015) ‘Mid-management, employee engagement, and the generation of reliable sustainable corporate social responsibility’, Journal of Business Ethics, 130, pp. 15-28.
Hsueh, C. F. (2015). ‘A bilevel programming model for corporate social responsibility collaboration in sustainable supply chain management’, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 73, pp. 84-95.