Changing Business Cultures from Within

In “Changing Business Cultures from Within”, Anderson, Amodeo and Hartzfield described the stages of change that a company must undergo in order to change the outcomes of their actions. Businesses are slowly changing their paradigms due to the increasing demand for sustainability in society. According to Anderson et al., a shift towards a more sustainable attitude requires five stages of change: awakening, cocooning, metamorphosis, emergence, and engagement. In the awakening stage, a company must be open to new opinions and opportunities to change and create a new vision for the future. Then in the cocooning stage, the company engages in activities that would benefit the vision and develop an action plan. Once the company recognizes the course of action, they will enter the metamorphosis stage where the new sustainable vision is ingrained into every part of the company’s actions. This process includes teaching employees about the new view and putting the words into action. The final stage is influencing others where the company continually engages other companies and searches for new answers for further development of their sustainable goal.

For a sustainable future, businesses must focus on ecosystems and society in addition to profit. Currently, society is pressuring companies to acquire a sustainable mindset. People prefer to purchase merchandise from a company that has an initiative to be sustainable as they feel they are funding a good cause. This in turn, can be profitable for marketing and would create a positive feedback loop that could potentially cause more companies to undergo positive change.