Sustainable development in business environment helps modern companies to improve their performance and increase profitability. Marketing companies are usually described and discussed under steady-state conditions. Their structural forms and processes are determined, including such concepts as line and staff relationships, the division of responsibilities and authority, and group charts. Equally significant for sustainable development is the process of organization adjustment to meet changing markets and internal conditions.
For though sustainable development comprise regular sets of behavior and specified interrelationships, achievement in marketing depends on one element — dealing with change. “Relative cost, however, via value, is a significant driver of share change as it can represent sustainable advantages” (Brands, Innovation and Growth 2004, p. 13).
Today, new organizational processes and arrangements are essential to deal with new products and goals. Modern companies must not be directed to the maintenance of a placid, static, stable situation. Rather, it should be directed to achieve “dynamic sustainability” — stability through adjustments. The sustainable development process as evidenced in marketing has witnessed a change in the design of organizations, changes in personnel and job titles, and development of a new and specialized staff.
Sustainability helps modern organizations to become a part of environment and respond to changes and needs of business. The sustainable environment is such a rich area for innovations with ideal combination of virgin issues (Tomkin 2007, p. 10). Profitable changes require information, intertwined with organization structure, which in turn shape the information base. As companies grow to include wider territories and product lines, formal intelligence systems become requisite for evaluating and designing sustainable organizations. Modern organizations have to change in two ways. They have to plan to make radical adjustments over the long run to meet frantic market changes. Second, they have to meet shorter-term changes that require less radical but continuous adaptation (Bansal, 2001).
Sustainable development depends on marketing in three ways. First, where there is unused productive ability, marketing pressures are generated to use it, which occasions added expenditures on salesmen, advertising, distributors, and marketing research. Second, marketers develop new uses for current products. Third, markets are analyzed for new, profitable opportunities. Growth is accompanied by larger organizational complexes, both internal and external, that place pressures on coordination and integration. As the growth process continues, managers see shifts to product, divisional, or functional areas to ease pressures on coordination.
Thus change and growth are not cost-free. The addition of marketing managers, such as researchers or planners, induces the division of labor, more organization levels, and greater coordination (Brands, 2004). This requires the establishment of more formalized procedures and special staffs and departments. Both rate and kind of growth affect an organization’s form and efficiency. Although sustainable growth is partially an internal process, market conditions establish external constraints and influence both the current use of resources and the direction of expansion. “The better solution is to us use IT to create collaborative laboratories (what we refer to as where we ca can bring together expertise” (Wacker 2009).
From an external perspective, sustainable development may be conceived of as an organizing activity — the organization of corporate inputs so that they are linked successfully with environments. The sustainable development of constellations of several marketing organizations results in ecosystems designed to achieve such coordinacy. Marketing organization and leadership is concerned with both sustainable development and the development of ecosystems.
Different managerial arrangements and the authority-responsibility relationships are investigated. More traditional methods of organizing the spectrum of marketing activities are contrasted with more contemporary approaches. The major forces resulting in managerial changes and guidelines for evolving new organizational structures are noted (Bansal, 2001).
From a functional standpoint, sustainable development can be referred as the control of marketing effort in terms of regulating such activities as advertising, personal selling, credit, product development, and marketing research. From a corporate standpoint, sustainable development exists within the corporate system by bringing the marketing factors into balance with those of other functional areas, such as production and finance.
From an external standpoint, control refers to a corporation’s adjustment to its changing environment through factors in the marketing mix. The very need for marketing control arises from the requirements of the marketing operation to manage change effectively. The adjustment of corporate effort to meet the demands of the sustainable development, or the balancing of corporate resources with market potential, is the essence of control activity.
Marketing control serves the end of redirecting and reshaping marketing effort in order to maximize a firm’s impact and sustainable development. It is the area of corporate activity through which the resources and actions of a company make the most of changing marketing opportunities. It is also the means for overcoming deviations from goals, and standards, for resolving conflicts, and for achieving greater efficiency (Brands, 2004).
The very need for sustainable development arises from the requirements of the marketing operation to manage change effectively. The adjustment of corporate effort to meet the demands of the market, or the balancing of business resources with market potential, is the essence of control activity. Sustainable development serves the end of redirecting and reshaping marketing effort in order to maximize a firm’s impact and profitability.
It is the area of sustainable development through which the resources and actions of a company make the most of changing marketing opportunities. It is also the means for overcoming deviations from goals, and standards, for resolving intersubsystem conflicts, and for achieving greater efficiency. For instance, from knowledge of inventories of staple items with extremely predictable demands, minimum inventory levels, and reorder points, quantities can be established, and computers can control the inventory situation (Tomkin, 2007).
But almost all marketing-control systems are open-loop systems that need human aid. It continuously gathers data about such aspects of marketing activity as costs, and the profitability of goods, customers, and territories. In so doing, it assesses the effectiveness of salesmen in terms of quotas, number of calls, and volume; it ascertains the competence of various types of distribution channels by volume and profit ability; and it determines the cost of different techniques of storing and handling inventories, which it evaluates against established or implied values. Based on assessment of sustainable development, some realignment of the marketing program may be made. Adjustment implies power — the power to control.
Although marketing systems are open rather than closed and are not completely capable of being controlled by automatic systems, they are tending to become more so. Sustainability helps modern companies adjust to new environment and respond effectively to coming changes, economic and business demands. New environments create new conditions of business, so the company should be flexible enough to predicate and foreshadow these business transformations.
Bibliography
Bansal, P. 2001, Building Competitive Advantage and Managing Risks through Sustainable Development. IVET Business Journal. Nov Dec, pp. 48-52.
Brands, 2004, Innovation and Growth. PIMS, pp. 1-49.
Tomkin, D. 2007, Greener By. U:. 6 (1), pp. 10-11.
Wacker, J. 2008, Technology can Help the Environment. Eweek Strategic Partner. Marc.