Response to Classmates:
Respond to at least two peers to either build on their discussion, add a new point, or add an alternative perspective. Be sure to support your replies with scholarly citations.
Peer #1: Michael
When we think about the connection between social sustainability, social justice, and distributed team management DEI comes to mind. Social justice is where everyone in the society deserves an equal amount in pay, protection, rights, and other human needs. The business world has recognized the importance of a trade-off among the challenging priorities of safeguarding the environment, economic development, and social justice (Casula, 2012). Then we think about social sustainability and that is how the organization or area will remain reliable in regard to social issues. A major challenge for organizations engaging in social sustainability is to bridge the gap between their business approach to address their financial objectives and long-term social objectives (Buser and Koch 2014).
When you put both social sustainability and social justice together, these are vital to distributed team management and must be maintained. From the philosophy of the office workforce to how leadership treats its employees and the way the company does business this all places a factor in the social equality of everyone involved. Overall, these principles are what keep the social norms within a distributed team equal and fair. The better that these principles are held the better the company is going to succeed.
In the Coast Guard, we saw an impact on our people during the social unrest of the killing of George Floyd. George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, died in Minneapolis after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer (Taylor, 2020) As a military organization just like society saw a lot of social unrest and not everyone in the organization understood or recognize that others were feeling many emotions after this event. So, the Coast Guard leadership recognized this issue and knew they had to do something to help our members. They created a mandatory sit-down in which all hands had to get together and talk about the social unrest.
Now, I know how everyone feels about mandated training since most people just sit there and don’t talk. But with all the tension and unrest in society, this event needs to happen and was the impact that many members needed to understand. Overall, I was very glad for everyone that sat down when we talked about how everyone felt and the issues in society. During the event, there was a script that you followed, and it gave you a talking point to address in the group. This event did help to help to mitigate some of the concerns that people had. This tragic event happened, and no one can take away the pain from that. But understanding the social unrest and everyone’s feeling around it gave everyone the ability to understand and help other members of the organization.
References:
Ajmal, M. M., Khan, M., Hussain, M., & Helo, P. (2018). Conceptualizing and incorporating social sustainability in the business world.Links to an external site.Links to an external site. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 25(4), 327-339.
Buser M, Koch C. (2014). Is this none of the contractor’s business? Social sustainability challenges informed by literary accounts. Construction Manag Econ. 32(7–8):749–759.
Casula VA, Soneryd L. (2012). Organizing matters: how “the social dimension” gets lost in sustainability projects. Sustainable Dev. 20(1):18–27.
Taylor, D. B. (2020, May 30). George Floyd protests: A Timeline. The New York Times. Retrieved March 14, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-protests-timeline.html
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Peer #2: Evelyn
Corporations must rethink, redesign, and redevelop business practices in a manner that is sustainable (Ajmal, A 2017). Sustainability relates to how corporate practices impact the economy, society at large and the environment. Corporations have started communicating and reporting on their sustainability efforts on an annual basis through the lens of people, planet and profit (Ajmal, A 2017). The aim of the sustainability efforts is to create a an equitable society one that is inclusive and allows members of society to participate economically free of prejudice. Social sustainability helps a corporation become successful on a global scale and conduct business in an ethical manner in the communities were the business operations are conducted and to respect the local culture.
Social justice focuses on the issues of fairness amongst individuals and equity regarding access to wealth opportunities and social benefits (CFI, 2023). Therefore there is an intersection between social justice and sustainability as companies must ensure that their policies are applied fairly to all employees regardless of culture or geographic location. The five pillars of social justice are access to resources, equity, participation, diversity and human rights. Most organizations now have diversity, equity and inclusion programs which are strongly aligned with their sustainability efforts.
The social justice issued that is relevant to my profession is diversity within Corporate America. Historically and even today African American women have had low representation within Corporate America and those who enter jobs within finance early on in the careers either reach a ceiling very quickly never reaching executive levels or they leave the organizations soon after due to frustrations because they are not able to progress.
In one of the organizations that I worked for a decision was made that the company would be focused on increasing diversity at the leadership position levels and the company began to provide annual updates on the percentage increases in diversity at the management and leadership levels. The numbers appeared to be remaining flat and, in some cases, even declining. The organization realized that communicating good intentions was insufficient. Specific steps had to be taken to truly see change. For example training programs to address discrimination in hiring practices, people tend to want to hire people who look like them and have similar backgrounds. So this had to be addressed through equitable hiring and interviewing training programs. Also the organization created new management and leadership training programs targeted for specific groups to assist in bolstering confidence so that those individuals could also apply and be prepared to take on leadership positions.

References
Ajmal, M. M., Khan, M., Hussain, M., & Helo, P. (2018). Conceptualizing and incorporating social sustainability in the business world. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mian-Ajmal/publication/321371093_Conceptualizing_and_incorporating_social_sustainability_in_the_business_world/links/5f79c04a92851c14bcacbfe3/Conceptualizing-and-incorporating-social-sustainability-in-the-business-world.pdf.International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 25(4), 327-339.
Corporate Finance Institute (n.d.). Social Justice.Links to an external site. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/esg/social-justice/
Zheng, L. (June 15, 2020). We are entering the age of corporate social justice.Links to an external site.Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/06/were-entering-the-age-of-corporate-social-justiceLinks to an external site.

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