Addressing the Sustainability Challenge and its Effect on
Managers of Modern Organizations

Addressing the Sustainability Challenge
Modern society is affected daily by technological advances, the fluidity of the economic system, the legitimacy of products, and the constant change in the environment. Likewise, modern organizations face the same challenges. As Daft (2012) mentions, all organizations exist for a purpose. The challenge for managers is to be able to understand these challenges as well as be able to project how they will affect their organization. The manager then must be able to apply organizational changes that will exploit these challenges in order to promote growth. Otherwise, the existing purpose of the organization would deteriorate. This issue is known as organizational sustainability; just as society must adapt to the constant change of the environment, organizations must adapt to constant change in order to maintain their purpose. Further, corporate sustainability is being able to identify the social, environmental, and economic impact that leaders must address for the success of their organization. It is critical for managers to consider sustainability because in order to keep an organization’s product or service relevant to the market, they must be able to adapt their strategy to the constant change of environment.
Organizational sustainability encompasses the personnel that make up the organization, the products and services that the organization provides, and the processes of the organization (McNamara, 2014). For example, Daft (2012) reviews the highs and lows of the Xerox Corporation. As he explains, at the turn of the twenty-first century, Xerox was a corporate kingpin. The company’s revenue had sky-rocketed and the company had no real competitors to challenge it. However, in just a few short years, the company’s value