Achieving Competitive Advantage

Discuss the challenges to sustainability posed by the tragedy of the commons

Reciprocal cooperation can be established, sustain itself and grow if the proportion of people in a community who behave in a narrow, self-interested way is not too high. Solving CPR problems involves two distinct complications: (1) restricting user access to the resource and (2) creating incentives for users to invest in the resource instead of overexploiting it. When social interactions enable those who use reciprocity to gain a reputation for trustworthiness, others will be willing to cooperate with them to overcome CPR or tragedy of the commons situations, which then leads to increased gains for themselves and their offspring. Thus, close-knit communities of people that can identify one another are more likely than diverse, separated groups of strangers to use trust, reciprocity, and reputation to develop norms that restrict access and create incentives for proper use. However, the ability of local communities to develop social institutions to manage CPRs may not be easily converted or scaled-up to broader or global social settings. In many cases, environmental resources span wide geographic areas and may encompass various political boundaries. When diverse groups are present or there are large numbers of participants, organizing may be more difficult and many of the requisite characteristics of local CPR solutions may be absent.

Sustainable growth gives people a false sense of security. Because corporations appear to be taking responsibility for sustainability people feel the job is being done and they don’t need to change their own behaviour. But, corporations are designed for profit. When corporations take all of the, responsibility for sustainability is to get the business industrial growth model with all of its consequences and problem symptoms.

Discussing the primary ways in which sourcing function impacts on supply chain

Outsourcing occurs when a company purchases...