Learning from the Operational Practices of Sustainable Companies

Abstract

One of the success factors of sustainable companies is the way they operate and achieve repeated performance over time by following some common operating principles. They favored decision-making autonomy to make the most of external opportunities with the available resources and skills. However, autonomy has also its drawbacks and sustainable firms applied it with some discipline.

Enduring corporations master the ability to keep themselves simple and not to be overwhelmed by suffocating organizational complexity so that they adjust faster and very efficiently to any change in the environment. They make a systematic but controlled use of outsourcing. They have an organizational learning capacity that enables them to continuously improve. Those firms facilitate extensive and challenging training and they have developed a unique ability to integrate the lessons learned from their experience.

Long-lasting firms encourage accountability as a way to control performance. They do not believe in centralized control based on a detailed planning of actions. They prefer to evaluate actual performance with few indicators and they encourage individual and cultural control.