Green Practices and Challenges in Zimbabwean Organisations: A Multidimensional Perspective

Abstract

Businesses all over the world are using green practices and policies to be sustainable in various management domains and out of respect for environmental security. Thus, a green business runs its operations with consideration for the general public’s welfare and the quality of the environment. Broadly speaking, being green is a multidimensional process, and various practices can be adopted when the organisation wishes to move to green behaviour. This makes managing people, processes, and products sustainably challenging. Using a qualitative research approach and the interpretivism philosophy, this study investigated the extent to which organisations have adopted green practices and the challenges thereof. The study was anchored on a descriptive cross-sectional research design, uncontrolled quota sampling method which identified 62 participants. Primary data analysis was done using the top-down deductive thematic approach. Study results revealed that green practices are still far from being accepted and used by organisations across the country. This is because of several factors, including lack of knowledge and the fact that greening of business is still primarily seen as an additional burden in terms of cost increase. Therefore, training and awareness initiatives are critical first steps to develop organisational capabilities to embrace green practices in internal and external settings. This study aims to increase knowledge of environmentally friendly green behaviours. Overall, such a discovery calls for additional research using longitudinal studies on a wider geographical area.