You may have heard about the effect of El Nino on the environment but what about its impact on big business?
University of Queensland researcher Dr Andrew Griffiths of the UQ Business School is one of the first in the world to study corporate resilience and adaptation to long-term global climate change.
Changes in the environment as a consequence of pollution and human impact are increasingly becoming an issue for society on a global scale.
It is becoming more important for corporations to consider the impact of these environmental changes.
Dr Griffiths has won a $60,000 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award announced on September 22 as a highlight of UQ Research Week. He is looking at how managers can create resilience in their organisation to cope with these changes.
“If organisations are not resilient and do not take on board conditions in the natural environment, then you won’t see resilient economic systems,” Dr Griffiths said.
“An organisation can forge ahead and keep burning up natural resources, using the environment and making money, but if they don’t start to look at how they treat the environment, then they could reduce the sustainability of the very economic system that supports them,” he said.
Looking at the effects of unpredicted significant long-term ecological changes (or massive discontinuous change) on companies is a relatively new concept when studying business.
In the past, companies that are lean and efficient have been praised for their ability to produce profits at little cost.
Long-term ecological changes pose different problems than the effects of a natural disaster or a short-term environmental change, which are generally dealt with through corporate risk management plans.
Dr Griffiths research looks at ensuring a company has “slack resources” and capabilities to adjust to massive changes in its operating environments.
While most industry sectors will be impacted on by global climate change, particular attention can be paid to agricultural or pastoral companies and those whose product is based on natural resources. This is a concern in Australia with increasing problems with drought.
“Pastoral-based companies have been around for a long period of time,” Dr Griffiths said.
“We can track their complete historical records and compare their historical resilience as a company with patterns of climate change, and you can start to see how companies learn about the environment,” he said.
Drought could have a severe effect on businesses based in a winemaking region; a significant change in climate temperature could have a major impact on an aquafarming business; and increased frequency of storms could have implications for the insurance industry.
“In this project, we will be looking at how companies have learnt from their past environmental experiences and applied that to their current and future dealings with the natural environment,” Dr Griffiths said.
“There is a present trend in thinking the environment and sustainability is a government rather than a private sector problem, but this is beginning to change.”
Media: For further information, contact Dr Andrew Griffiths, telephone 07 3365 1619 or Elizabeth Kerr at UQ Communications, telephone 07 3365 2339. Pix of Dr Griffiths are available from UQ photo library coordinator Diana Lilley, telephone 07 3365 2753.
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