3

Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable

Development: Finding the Impact of Social
Sustainability in Business Performance of
Hospitality Sector of Pakistan
Khuram Shehzad Bukhari1, M. Ishaq Bhati2,
Hayat Muhammad Awan1 and Amna Wahid1
1Institute of Management Sciences,

Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan,

2La Trobe University, Melbourne
1Pakistan
2Australia

1. Introduction
The relationship between business and society, and the way this is confined by ethics and
institutions, has long been a subject of discussion. Adam Smith, the father of modern
economics, give emphasis to how economic dealings were premised on a range of ethical
postulations and foundations. At least since Smith’s days, ascertaining an institutional
context in which business activity, broadly speaking, can augment social outcomes has been
a key objective and legitimating foundation for the development of modern states.
Corporate citizenship is not a novel concept rather its history and political economy is quite
enthralling, similarly the questions relating the social responsibility of businesses always
remain in debates, even if there were not been discussed by making use of ‘sustainable
development’ concept , as they are currently. “So is there really a new, socially responsible
role for business in sustainable development?” The answer is yes, to the extent that now
there is an ever increasing demand and expectations relating to the business experts and
leaders in making their contribution to more comprehensively fulfill the broader objectives
then they used to, even now many largest companies themselves are very interested in
adopting these responsibilities at least rhetorically.
The increasingly mainstream and high-level expectation that business can and should
contribute to sustainable development is perhaps more important for the developing nation
like Pakistan, Pakistani industries are faced with increased threats of the global warming
and social concerns, the measures taken by our industries need to be modified, and require
to have proper understanding regarding the concept of sustainability in both manufacturing
and service sector.
In Pakistan sustainable development concept justly makes the differentiation. Pakistan is
facing both the green and brown environmental problems. Over the precedent decade so

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many years a multifaceted interweaving of interconnected issues such as structural changes in

the economy declining infrastructure provision, and work force and rapid demographic and
social changes have had negative influence on individuals and communities. The collective
and longer term influence from these concerns are not yet well understood. However, we are
beginning to see the indicators of these changes. Specifically, these are current testimonies of
negative social upshots associated with cotemporary advancement pattern.
Pakistan has now started given the significance to environmental tribulations, like Pakistan
environmental protection ordinance 1983 was the first endeavor to gear environmental
problems methodically. It create a lawful basis for complete environmental policy making,
the institution and enforcement of customaries, environmental impact evaluations and the
inclusion of environmental deliberation in the development policies. The ministry of
Pakistan and Pak-EPA has started preparation of national environmental action plan.
But the concept social sustainable development is unnoticed which is pre-requisite to
economic development, a vivacious economy requires having social investment.
As the goal of sustainable development is clearly to secure economic development, social
equity and environmental protection. As much as they could work in harmony, these goals
sometimes work against each other in our modern world. The rapid development of good
living, travel and in general of the consumer society has often resulted in less protection to
the environment and to some groups of the world population. Ferocious search for
profitability has not co-existed harmoniously with making the world a better place.
However there is general consensus that it cannot go on for ever and those who are favored
by life now feel responsible for those who have not had the same chance. Economic growth
will always remain the basis of human development but it should integrate as well its
impact on the people and on the planet. Sustainable development focuses on having a
holistic approach to development taking into consideration economic, social and
environmental needs while avoiding over utilizing key natural resources. It entices us to
change the way we develop and use technologies. It makes us acutely aware that the interest
of the developed countries is to help the development of the emerging countries and under-
privileged peoples.

2. Literature review
Literature is reviewed in order to probe that, how our journey starting from financial
performance measures departs at non-financial performance indicators, and then further
leading to the novel concept like ‘social sustainability’, which is taking its place and
influencing the business practices.“What is social sustainability and how it relates to current
business practices”? is one of our research question which is answered by reviewing the
entire process of revolutions that taken place in performance measures, we see that how
1950s’ operations turned into the new world view i.e. sustainable efficiency.
All that previous cost associated methods depleted by time, once they were the only
measures for assessing and evaluating the performance but now depending on them solely
would be a mistake. In 1950s and 1960s development regarding the management of
accounting taken place, which is further developed, documented and recognized by the
work of Johnson and Kaplan (1983). Then we see that how different other concepts emerge,
in 1987 return on investment (ROI) was been emphasized but as a result of criticism leveled

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
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at ‘traditional management accountant’ (1989) Cooper developed another concept named on

‘activity costs’ (ABC), which further led to the determination of productivity ratios in 1900s.
By the time competition becomes more enhanced, business leader start finding the new
areas which they can address and be profitable, names like ‘Deming’, ‘Juran’, ‘Crosby’,
‘Ishikawa’ and ‘Feigenbaum’ are very much significant in real, because of their remarkable
theories and giving the world, about idea of total quality management (TQM), which is the
basic concept, that starts from proper addressing the customer requirements to the customer
satisfaction. Then in 1993 and 1994, ‘Andersen Consulting’ ‘IBM consulting’ and ‘London
Business School’ made use of benchmarking, which is even today’s well known practice.
From their businesses focus, the process of improving continually and making the
application of continuous improvement is the part of their management. Then further in
2000, statistical processes taken their place and in 2006 one of the statistical process named
as six-sigma gave the saving of US$ 17 billion to Motorola. Afterwards the organizations
diverge from the emphasis of just financial performance measures to the different non-
financial performance criteria, from their, the awards like Deaming, Malcolm Baldrige
quality award (MBQNA) and European National Quality Award (ENQA) introduced which
gave more focus to the practices like leadership, people orientation, process orientation and
assessing the results in term of society and customer satisfaction.
Now being a part of 21st century we required to have changed sort of understanding as there
is more customization, and ever changing demand, previously manager just deal with short
term solutions don’t give importance to the future implications, impact and effects. So this is
the reason why we are giving more importance to sustainability, which is based from the
triple bottom line concept given by John Elkington (1998),
“Sustainable business is business that is conducted with both an awareness of, and consideration for,
the impact on the physical and social environments, both directly and indirectly, now and in the
future. The awareness and consideration are manifest through decisions, policies, actions, and
reactions”.

2.1 Sustainability and sustainable development

The issue of sustainable development is becoming central to discussions about the future.
Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Bruntland 1987) it
is seen now that if the organizations don’t give importance in contribution towards
sustainable development, then there is quite risk of having loosing their shareholders.
Sustainable development is progressively more, been seen as major challenge (white and
lee; 2007).According to the ‘world commission on environment and development’,
sustainability became the watch word. More recently sustainability has been the subject of
renewed interest and debate (Rao;2000), literature is not that much developed to define the
term sustainability (Robbinson 2004) and there are many terms in literature such as
‘sustainable development’, ‘human sustainability’, ‘social sustainability’, ‘ecological
sustainability’, ‘environmental sustainability’, and ‘corporate sustainability’ as well as
aligned concepts of CSR and ‘corporate citizenship’.
In 1960 at an international discourse, concept of sustainable development emerged (Carson,
1962; United Nations Environment Programme, 1972; International Union for Conservation

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of Nature, 1980; World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987; United

Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1993), progressing through to more
recent international conferences such as the Kyoto Climate Change Conference in 1997 and
the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg in 2002. Becker et al. 1999,
argue that;
“Sustainable development might best be characterized as a contested discursive field which
allows for the articulation of political and economic differences between North and South
and introduces to environmental issues a concern with social justice and political
participation.”
The sustainable development concept is not the dream of some political party that disdains
capitalism and considers it to be evil. Nor is it the consequence of the delusion of people
who determined that this world would be better of if it we were going back to our natural
roots and resources. Sustainable development is definitely geared toward profitability and
the future. Without profit it seems obvious that no business would be sustainable.”
Regardless of the substantial scholastic and political attention paid to wide concept of
sustainable development, there is some impression that the “social” has been ignored and is
not seen to be equivalent to economic or environmental aspects of sustainable development.
As a result of this ignorance, social sustainability is the least abstractly formulated concept
of the three pillars (Kunz, 2008; Littig and Griebler, 2007; Partridge, 2006). This paper seeks
to fill this gap and to strengthen the term ‘social’ in the sustainability which is one of the
most important element of today’s highly competitive environment. The purpose of this
paper is to systematically develop a broader conceptualization of social sustainability and
seeing its impact on the over-all business performance of the hospitality sector of Pakistan.

2.2 Social sustainable development origin

Social sustainability concept basically originate from stake holder interest and Interest in
stakeholder theory took root in the field of strategic management (e.g., Clarkson, 1995;
Freeman, 1984; Frooman, 1999), then grew into organization theory (e.g., Donaldson &
Preston, 1995; Jones, 1995; Rowley, 1997) and business ethics (e.g., Phillips & Reichart, 2000;
Starik, 1995). Stakeholder theory’s social responsibility element allowed it to blend into
social issues in management (e.g.,Wood, 1991a, 1991b), and, more recently, it has begun to
enter the conversation about sustainable development (e.g., S. Sharma & Henriques, 2005;
Steurer, Langer, Konrad, & Martinuzzi, 2005). The theory came into prominence only in the
mid-1990s, apparently owing to the attention it received in a special issue of Academy of
Management Review in 1995, and gathered momentum in the late 90s.
“It is evident that contemporary approaches to development have not provided equitable
outcomes for all, and in some situations have contributed to the ‘breakdown’ of
community” (Greider, 1997; Saul, 1997). There is clearly a pressing need to develop a
stronger conceptual understanding of the social dimension of sustainable development that
links to and is grounded in real life policies and practices.
Social capital, social infrastructure, social justice and equity and engaged governance have
been identified by exploring literature (e.g. Barron and Gauntlett, 2002; Cuthill and Fien,
2005; Empacher and Wehling, 2002; Greater Vancouver Regional District, 2004; Magis and

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Shinn, 2008; Sachs, 1999). At this stage the framework is quite simple (as opposed to
simplistic) and is intended to provide a foundation for further empirical testing and critique
(Rapoport, 1985).
With the intent of empirical testing of the framework in mind, these four components have
been allocated specific roles relating to social sustainability.(Cuthill,2009) These are that;



Social capital provides a conjectural preparatory point for social sustainability,


Social infrastructure provides an equipped (operational) viewpoint,


Social justice and equity principally (ethically) very important and
engaged governance aim for providing ‘working together’.

Constructs Sub-dimensions.
Coleman; 1990, Social capital Social network ,Norms and Trust
Fukuyama; 1995,
Putnam; 1993
World bank; 1998 Institutions
Michael cuthill; 2005 Social Health ; Education ; Rural development;
infrastructure Activity ; Transport-oriented
(hard) development
Cuthill and Fien; 2005, Soft Needs of community; Informed and
Eade; 1997, Graventa; 2000 active citizen(capacity)
Lyon et al, 2001
Sen; 1999 Social justice and Appropriate and affordable; Housing;
equity Food sustenance; Guarantee of
individual and community safety.
NSW; 2004 Equality of rights
Epstein et al; 2000, Engaged Involvement in decision making
Cuthill; 2002, governance Community engagement.
Saul; 1997
Table 1. Dimensions of sustainable development

3. Conceptual framework
Sustainable development based on three pillars that are economic, environment and social.
Economic and environmental issues remain in discourse for so long, but in current practice
we are dealing with social discourse, social sustainability is basically originate from
stakeholder interest theory given by ‘Freeman stake holder legacy’. A unanimously accepted
definition for social sustainability is still not available, largely because of lacking harmony
on what is meant and understood by the social, in reality what defines the social is properly
resolute by underlying premises.
‘Social sustainable development’ is based on the following premises (Cuthill, 2009)
1. Environmental problems are basically themselves first and foremost social problems.
2. Economics is again something that is related to serving the people rather than people
serve economic interests. This is what we call ‘equitable distribution of resources.’

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These two factors are considered to be a sign of social sustainability framework, which in
further explains an inter-reliant and self strengthening relationship between four key
components: (1) social capital (2) social infrastructure (3) social justice and equity and (4)
engaged governance.

Social capital

Social
justice &
equity

Economic
sustainability
Social
sustainability
Social Environmental
infra- sustainability
structure

Engaged
governance

Fig. 1. Conceptualized framework for social sustainability

4. Methodology
This study is to develop a proper understanding of the concept of sustainability by having
focus on social segment, it interrogates that how the service sector particularly hospitals and
hotels of Pakistan develop their viewpoint towards sustainability. Research is aimed to
propose the indices of critical factors, which one firm can adopt and be competitive,
profitable, socially responsive and ethical.
The major research question identified for this study is:
Developing a “social sustainable framework” based on social capital, social infra- structure,
social justice and equity and engaged governance in the service sector of Pakistan, other
questions which are researched in the paper are as follow;

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
Finding the Impact of Social Sustainability in Business Performance of Hospitality Sector of Pakistan 77

What is social sustainability?

Is there any link of social sustainability with firm’s business performance?
Which element of social sustainability is more responsible for corporate stewardship?
What is role of social sustainability in hospitality sector?
Is social sustainability more in hotels and hospitals of Pakistan?
What are the critical success factors of social sustainability?

4.1 Specific design of research study

In this research study, both qualitative and quantitative techniques are used in order to
comprehend better results from the study. With the support of findings from literature
review, an empirical study was devised composing a survey investigating the critical
business strategy areas in hospitality sector of Pakistan from selected industries. They went
through the design of research instrument, initial case studies and survey of firms sampled
for the study followed by the analysis of data. The study used a questionnaire to acquire the
empirical information as well as companies’ annual reports and internet databases
containing any information of our interest. Main part of the questionnaire designed required
the respondent to give answer using five point Likert Scale ranging from 1=extremely
satisfied to 5= extremely dissatisfied.

4.2 Methods of collecting data

Mainly the three different sources of information have been used: Interviews, observations and
document. Interviews were used extensively to collect data from respondents within the
organizations. The interviews in the study were open and semi-structured. Often the
statements of the interviewees were repeated and concluded in order to avoid
misunderstandings. The interviews were done in respondents’ normal environment, to benefit
from the advantages this brings, a fact that thus has meant various interruptions (Lantz, 1993).
In addition to information provided from interviews, documents were collected when
possible during the research study. The objective was to get, yet another source of data to
facilitate data triangulation, and thereby strengthen the construct validity of the research.
Documents are sometimes hard to come by, and firms had different policies regarding
sharing this kind of information with people outside of the firm.
This study based on the descriptive approach in the context of this research involves best
organization agreeing to a set of critical success factors specific to their respective industry.
Partly, questionnaire design used by Ramirez and Loney (1993) was adapted to measure the
response rate of various critical factors important for being socially sustainable. Choice of
variables used in questionnaire is the product of in-depth literature review.

4.3 Criteria for site and participant selection

This study examined different hospitals and hotels committed to lessening the negative
impact their activity has on the social environment in which their business operate.

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Typically organizations interested in adopting more sustainable practices begin with what
has become known as the “low hanging fruit.” while important, this study seeks a deeper
understanding regarding initiatives that go beyond the point of entry. Therefore, this study
targeted those organizations that have been sum how or other involved in sustainability
efforts.
In the research study, some statistical techniques are also used by using Statistical Package
SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for analyzing the service sector of Pakistan with
reference to sustainable practices and its contribution in excellent performance. And other
technique used is AHP.

4.4 Research model

AHP is a method that orders the priorities in a given situation, incorporating the element of
subjectivity and intuition so that a final decision can be reached by making decisions for
part-issues in a consistent way and gradually moves up levels to deal with the given
situation having a clear view of what it entails. AHP is relatively simple and logical and
given that a certain consistency in the part-decisions is maintained, AHP can help decision
makers to deal with complicated issues where often not only tangible but also intangible
parameters affect their decision makers affect their decision. It should be noted briefly at this
point that AHP is as effective as its design in each individual case and that analysts should
exercise care and precision in capturing the true sub-elements and requirements of the case
in question. (Al-Harbi,2001).
The analysis of the data is carried out in different steps as explained in detail in the
following paragraphs.
Step 1. I developed the hierarchical representation of the problem by defining levels of
criteria and sub-criteria perceived as most important by respondent.
Step 2. In scale of 1 to 7, elements are assigned different degrees of relative
importance.
Step 3. The EIGEN value is calculated to determine the relative weight of each criterion in
relation to the one immediately above in the hierarchy. The priority vector is
established by calculating the row averages. At this point, the consistency index is
calculated by the following equation CR=CI/RI. Consistency index (CI) is
calculated by the following equation CI=LEMDA max-n/n-1, where n is the
number of sub-criteria of each criterion.
Step 4. The consistency ratio is used to check whether a criterion can be used for decision-
making.
Step 5. The sub-criterion priorities are combined to disclose the most important sub-criteria
for each criterion in order to develop an overall priority ranking.
Resulted items would be categorized in 4 tiers such as social capital, social infrastructure,
social justice and equity and engaged governance according to their priority weights
obtained for the sub-factors of each one of the four tiers.
The research model designed in this study is given below. In the current research model, the
numbers of items per dimension are established in the qualitative part of the study,

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
Finding the Impact of Social Sustainability in Business Performance of Hospitality Sector of Pakistan 79

Fig. 2. Research pattern by making use of AHP.

5. Data analysis
5.1 Hotel industry
The hotel and restaurant industry is very popular in Pakistan. It is one of the heavily taxed
and almost 75 to 80 percent of total revenue comes from the top hotel chains. Even in the
long term it has the greater potential growth. Pakistan approximately attracts 1.5 million
tourists every year.
Our empirical findings are quite supportive of the conceptual framework proposed, the four
key constructs chosen in model are crucial. In hotel industry we have seen that social justice
and equity among the other constructs have higher weightage , it is significantly valued,
findings suggest that among all chosen measures of social justice and equity, the great
priority is given to rule of law which cover all rights and liberties of employees in
organizational practices that enhance performance ,freedom of thought is another element
of social justice and equity by which innovative ideas develop and at the same time the
social responsibility regarding the employees satisfaction is also increased, then once
employees are satisfied we see by results that hotels’ responsibility is diverted to the
provision of individual and community safety and facilitation of fair access to resources.
Second construct which is highly prioritized is engaged governance which is measured by
choosing different elements gathered from literature , so we find that for the incorporation
of social sustainability and enhancement of business performance in hotels it is required that
there should the proper involvement of stake and stock holders in decision making,
customer demand is to be esteemed and the policy statements then designed accordingly,
hotels can be socially sustainable if the transparency maintained by enabling the citizen
access to their information and they can easily exert their demands on management for
better services.
Other two constructs that is social capital and social infrastructure building lie at the same
level, in social capital, findings of hotels suggest that for being socially sustainable they

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required to build the trust first with their management team and then with consumers,
another element of social capital which is important in hotels is the building of norms,
which basically enhance their efficiency and then helps in reduction of transaction cost in
hotels perspective, social networking lie at the third level of importance in hotels in contrast
to other two chosen dimensions, similarly in social infrastructure findings of the research
validate the earlier researches that the hotels are the most earning sector of the society so
their foremost responsibility is to develop their community in terms of providing
employment opportunities and fulfillment of environmental responsibilities.

Rank Social sustainability dimensions Relative weights

1 social justice and equity 0.315
2 Engaged governance 0.272
3 social capital 0.209
4 Social infrastructure 0.203
Table 2. Social sustainable dimensions and their relative weights

5.1.1 Index of social sustainability for hotels

i. Critical: Factors those are critical and absolutely essential. Tier-I of Indices of social
sustainability for hotels belong to fairness in policy making that comprise of policy
statements, rule of law, trust building by policy and involvement in decision making,
all these elements are related to the leadership role and top management commitment.
ii. Supporting: Factors those are important but not absolutely essential. Tier II related to
social justice and equity elements, here the elements which come with more priorities in
HOTELS are respect given to employees, genuine participation, guarantee of safety,
freedom of thought and citizen involvement. And in equity most contributing elements
in hotels are employment opportunities, transportation, education in terms of
development of their employees and fairness in distribution of resources.
iii. Maintaining: Factors are of minor importance. Tier III includes norms, trust building
and use of social networking for competition deterrence and hiring.

Tiers Critical factors of social sustainability in hotels of Pakistan

# Label Global Priority
Weight
Tier-1 1 how much value is given to citizens demand 0.072347
2 involvements in decision making 0.068079
3 policy statements 0.068079
4 rights and liberties covered by law 0.066455
5 safeguards for rural sector 0.061264
6 Trust built by policy 0.056817
Tier-II respect given 0.042678
8 opportunities for all people 0.038737
9 guarantee of safety 0.038737
10 Freedom of thought 0.034411
11 citizen exert demand 0.032184
12 enable citizens to gain greater access to information 0.031312

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
Finding the Impact of Social Sustainability in Business Performance of Hospitality Sector of Pakistan 81

Tiers Critical factors of social sustainability in hotels of Pakistan

Tier III 13 generates employment opportunities 0.028965
14 Rent hybrid vehicles 0.027185
15 fair access to economic resources 0.026596
16 fairness in distribution of resources 0.022915
17 subsidize public transportation 0.022093
18 equality of rights 0.022066
19 efficiency enhancement by norms 0.018456
20 trust by self interested action 0.01635
21 contribution in development of young 0.016084
22 infrastructure support at village level 0.014722
23 rent hybrid vehicles 0.013735
24 deterrence of competition 0.012915
25 helps in hiring desired employees 0.011606
26 flexible working hours 0.01062
27 how much value is given to citizens demand 0.072347
28 involvements in decision making 0.068079
Table 3. Critical factors of social sustainability in hotels of Pakistan

5.1.2 Regression analysis

Then the regression analysis was done in order to find the relationship of social
sustainability and business performance dimensions. For this research we select three basic
dimensions that are customer satisfaction, which is measured by evaluating the hotels
customer retention and customer feedback, second is employee satisfaction which is
measured by choosing; cooperation among employees and their influence on personal
development as the sub-measures, and top management commitment is chosen as
moderating variable.
Following table show the all those business dimensions of hotels which have the significant
relationship with social sustainability dimensions.
As in particular hotels it is found that there is significant relation with customer feedback
and it has significance of 0.027 which is less than alpha value of 0.05. With each individual
sustainability dimension the result shows, customer feedback has positive relation with
social infrastructure and capital building in relation to others, this is proven by literature
that customers in hotels give more feedback for the proper management of social practices
these include; building of norms, trust and networking as well as facilitation of health,
education and transportation along with community development which is the major
element of social infrastructure & capital.
Another performance dimension showing significant relation is cooperation in hotels, its p
value is 0.052. Cooperation is positively correlated with one of the dimension i.e. social
infrastructure and capital building and has the significance of 0.095. Social capital as we
have already discussed in detail is the element that relates to the development of social
networking, norms and trust all of these would be developed only if the cooperation exist
among the workers as well as with top management and in hotels this coordination and
cooperation matters a lot.

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Another dimension which shows significant relation is top management commitment in

hotels. Lying at the significance level of [Link] is the moderating variable without top
management commitment idea of social sustainability cannot be incorporated, henceforth
proved in our findings too.

Dependent Independent Sum of B Df Beta Means t F Sig.

variables Variables Squares Squares

Customer 17.020 3 5.673 36.242 .027

Feedback
Engaged 2.473 .779 2.793 .108
Governance
Social justice -2.63 -1.48 -5.37 .645
& equity
Social 2.698 .578 .508 .043
infrastructure
& capital
Cooperation 8.924 3 2.957 3.115 .052

Engaged 1.237 .492 .565 .629

Governance
Social justice -.188 -.134 -.156 .891
& equity
Social 4.292 1.023 3.009 .095
infrastructure
& capital
Top 13.151 3 4.384 3.733 .018
management
Commitment Engaged 7.317 2.434 3.015 .095
Governance
Social justice -3.18 -1.901 -2.37 .141
& equity
Social -.013 -.003 -.008 .994
infrastructure
& capital
Table 4. Hotel’s social sustainability dimensions and business performance:

5.2 Hospital industry

The health system in Pakistan is currently going through several restructuring at the federal,
provincial and district levels particularly to advance the delivery of health services to the
population. These reforms are part of the overall development framework that endeavors to
raise the importance given to the social sectors, particularly the health sector, in the country
to address their poor performance (Report of the Health System Review Mission – Pakistan
2007). So in this paper social sustainability framework is measured in number of different
hospitals. Empirical findings revealed that the in hospital industry the results are almost the
same as that of hotel industry, reason behind this is that both are component of service
sector and facing the same situation where the services are directly provided to customers
and without customer’s intimate involvement it is quite impossible to deliver. Here the
social justice and equity has the highest ranking and with respect to hospital industry it

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includes majorly the element of respect given to each individual member of staff starting
from ward boy to the specialist doctor, every employee has its own importance, proper
formulation of laws are required from the patients as well as management view point.
In hospitals just like hotels second highest construct is engaged governance, in order to
properly encounter the social sustainability, hospitals’ policy matters a lot to show
commitment to promote environmental stewardship, waste management implications are
required to be a part of their policy.
Facts about social capital show that trust is the foremost element and in hospitals security
particular department in hopsital fulfills this challenging job round-the-clock with
impeccable proficiency and responsibility. It provides security for the patients’ vehicles,
belongings and lives, while at the same time maintains close check on hospital property and
hospital’s overall discipline and decorum. Now a days hospitals premises are constantly
monitored through close circuit televisions. Issuance of parking ticket, emergency help line
and ever-vigilant security staff are a few steps taken by the Security Departments of
different hospitals for ensuring a safe, healthy and peaceful healing environment for out-
patients. Then comes norms and finally social networking. Norms are important for proper
documentation, proper vision, mission, code of conduct discussed with their staff, properly
documented visitor policy, registration policy and administration policy. Fresh hands are
molded into skilled professionals by their proper orientation. Job descriptions & hiring by
keeping a match of skills and abilities, pre planned and pre scheduled work plan in each
single hospital.
Social networking in hospitals is important, a devoted/energetic team for effective and
timely distribution of information and instructions, a full fledge Intranet solution/ internal
mailing system has been deployed in many of the hospitals to facilitate the departments/
users to communicate electronically. These steps have been taken to become cost effective
and environment friendly by minimizing the paper use.
To facilitate the back office administrative activities the hospitals has also successfully
implemented hospital wide browse based ‘Material Requisition’ and ‘Management System’,
‘Procurement system’ and the support the Human resource department as fully automated
Human Resources Information Management System, with indigenously developed
Biometric Time and attendance management systems.
Social infrastructure building in hospitals is important from the perspective of having
Working under ISO 9001:2000, ISO Internal Auditor Certification. All type of waste
collection / transportation / storage / incineration and final disposal within the hospitals
are done by their material management department. Similarly for education, a department
for Research & Continuing Medical Education has been established to keep the doctors and
medical staff updated with the latest research.
Transport Department in hospitals is a vibrant department that not only provides pick and
drop to hundreds of clinical and administrative staff without failing but also meets
emergent deadlines of various nature. Provision of ambulance service to inpatients as well
as on call basis is also managed by this department. The department owns a varied fleet of
busses, coasters, carriage carriers and staff cars. So proper policies regarding the
management of transport is very much essential in hospitals.

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Over all social sustainability dimensions and their relative weights are given below;

Rank Social sustainability dimensions Relative weights

1 social justice and equity 0.397
2 Engaged governance 0.278
3 social capital 0.233
4 Social infrastructure 0.092
Table 5. Social sustainability dimensions and their relative weights (hospitals)

5.2.1 Index of social sustainability for hospitals

i. Critical: Tier-I of Indices of social sustainability for hospitals belong to the development
of policy statements, as it is identified in literature review one of the most important
factor for the proper working..
ii. Supporting: Tier-II comprises of second most critical set of performance indicators for
social sustainability. Factors included in Tier-II belong to engaged governance. Here in
hospitals the following elements of engaged governance are having more global
priority that is the respect to staff, rule of law, freedom of thought, involvement in
decision making, and the value given to citizen demand, so these elements from
hospital perspective are more important. And further it is comprised of social justice
and equity factors which are equality of rights, fair access and distribution of resources,
opportunities and guarantee of safety. Along with this, it also includes the community
involvement element specifically which are related to the infrastructure support and
citizen involvement in every single aspect as it is service sector so role of direct
involvement automatically advances in contrast to other factors.
iii. Maintaining Tier III related to social capital and infrastructure that is basically given
importance to networking, norms, and trust, health and education elements.

Tiers Critical factors of social sustainability in hospitals of Pakistan

# Label Global Priority
Weight
Tier-1 1 Policy statements 0.084641071
TierII 2 Respect is given to every single individual of staff 0.063646156
3 Rights and liberties covered by the rule of law 0.059628894
4 Freedom of thought 0.057238943
5 policy statements consists of a commitment to 0.056359244
promote environmental stewardship
6 How much value is given to the citizen’s demand 0.054242122
Equality of rights established and promoted for all 0.047875736
people
8 fair access for all people to economic resources 0.047875736
9 opportunities for all people to genuinely 0.047875736
participate
10 Guarantee of individual and community safety. 0.047875736
11 Infrastructure support 0.046979999
12 Enable citizens to gain greater access to information 0.041378782

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
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Tiers Critical factors of social sustainability in hospitals of Pakistan

13 Citizens exert demands on the management for 0.041378782
better services.
Tier III 14 Fairness in the distribution of resources 0.024983063
15 Trust can be built by policy 0.01666005
16 Norms reduces the risk of coordination failure 0.016153591
17 Efficiency enhances by following the norms 0.015104051
18 Trust is important for economic prosperity 0.015067791
19 Subsidize public transportation for employees 0.0149178
20 Helps in hiring desired employers 0.014499785
21 Norms reduce the transaction cost 0.014048194
22 Norms coordinate expectations 0.013412748
23 Generates employment opportunities for rural 0.012437524
sector.
24 Rent hybrid vehicles 0.0106329
25 Deterrence of the competition becomes easier 0.010616929
26 social connections generate valuable ideas 0.01033777
27 To what extent the workers feel free in sharing 0.010224048
information
28 Safeguards for the rural sector. 0.0092184
Table 6. Critical factors of social sustainability in hospitals of Pakistan

5.2.2 Regression analysis

Then the regression analysis was done in order to find the relationship of social
sustainability and business performance dimensions. As we have already discussed that we
have chosen three basic dimensions that are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction
and top management commitment is selected as moderating variable.
Following table show the all those business dimensions of hotels which have the significant
relationship with social sustainability dimensions.
Hospitals is the sector where customer interaction is of high mark, they can develop
themselves more rapidly if customers give proper feedback and it has already proven by
literature as well as in our sampled firm we see that the level of significance is 0.023 which is
less than value of alpha (0.05).
Individually if we see the results we can see that customer feedback particularly in hospitals
have positive significance in all chosen dimensions. So it’s the finding of the research that
performance dimension which social sustainability in hospitals enhances is customer
feedback, as details given in table.
Another dimension which shows significant relation with the help of statistical analysis is
the top management commitment is highly significant to chosen social sustainability factors.
Top management commitment has positive relation with engaged governance and social
infrastructure and capital. No doubt as from literature we see that for the proper following
the social sustainability guideline one requires to have support from top management
(Detoni and Tonchia, 2001).

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86 Globalization and Responsibility

Dependent Independent Sum of B Df Beta Means t F Sig.

variables Variables Squares Squares

Customer 3.999 3 1.333 1064.4 .023

Feedback 6
Engaged 10.16 8.292 10.62 .060
Governance 8
Social justice 3.946 4.430 8.570 .074
& equity
Social 5.065 4.817 15.60 .041
infrastructur 5
e & capital
Top 19.061 3 6.354 4.975 .001
management
commitment Engaged 6.073 2.280 2.725 .000
Governance
Social justice .953 .603 1.198 .270
& equity
Social 2.460 1.171 2.093 .075
infrastructure
& capital
Table 7. Hospital’s social sustainability dimensions and business performance:

6. Findings and discussion

From the gathered data and responses it is clearly seen that in overall hospitality sector (
hotels & hospitals) ‘engaged governance’ and ‘social justice & equity’ lie as at greater
importance because in recent times, there are great number of forces which are impacting
the human lives. These impacts are both empowering and disempowering the service sector
of Pakistan. If we take an example of information revolution, we see that citizens’
(consumers) are highly informative as they have greater access to information and on the
basis of that they also exert their great demand on management for getting the better and
desired services. And particularly in service sector where consumers are in direct contact
there the management of their requirements becomes more sophisticated.
The approach used in this paper basically envisioned and comprised of all those
unanimously renowned principles of good governance. so we try to include all those set of
factors that basically relate to the concept of having balanced power and getting balanced
results in return. These principles are relating to authenticity and voice, which is to
gratitude, individuals to have an involvement in making decision. As it leads towards
consensus, which intercede contradictory concerns in the best of interest of group and on
their procedures and policies.
Another important principle and finding of research is to to have a proper orientation
regarding direction that by the top management commitment or we can say that leaders as
well as public both share wide and long-term viewpoints for having human development
and good supremacy, along with the understanding of cultural, historical and social
contexts which are mandatory for such development.

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Strengthening the ‘Social’ in Sustainable Development:
Finding the Impact of Social Sustainability in Business Performance of Hospitality Sector of Pakistan 87

Then further importance in social sustainability lie to the concept of ‘accountability’, which
is very important for ‘engaged governance’ and ‘social justice & equity’, it is basically refer
to the transparency in their entire operations of hospitals and hotels.
Then organizations should have to give importance to fairness, in term of distribution of
resources, equality of rights’ establishment and promotion, fair access to economic
resources, opportunities for genuine participation, all these elements ultimately results into
freedom of thought.
‘Social capital’ and ‘community infrastructure’ building is another important constructs of
social sustainability in hospitality industry, which by the results we see lie below in
comparison to ‘engaged governance’ and ‘social justice & equity’ as these are the basic
services, which one organization provide and make available in retort to the demands of
communities. They enhance the quality of life by building networking, norms, trust, health
measures, education, transportation, and rural development. Over all these elements need to
be further focused and developed in the selected organizations.
From the research we see that sampled hotels and hospitals lack recognition of these
important elements and do mistakes in allocating the right amount of cost to proper project
which resulted into the failure in term of building social infrastructure and local
communities. This is the reason that many metropolitan and regional areas have been hard
hit, only because of failure in encountering changing employment patterns as well as
changes associated to demography and society, answer to this is simply having the proper
social capital development and adequate provision for social infrastructure as it has
exacerbated many problems in the past. Stake holders are more demanding than past so
automatically for catering the competition, responsibilities shifted to the business leaders to
amalgamate more sophisticated ways of operations in order to satisfy and have sustained
relations with their customers. It could be only possible if they fulfill their social
responsibilities, because environmental and economic areas have been now addressed a lot,
now the need to cover the third segment in such a way that it become a source of providing
vivacious economy.

7. Managerial implications
Furthermore, measuring the sustainability dimension on performance criteria, the findings
of this study validate that social sustainability linked positively with the performance, that
hotels and hospitals should improve their performance through the adoption of social
sustainability. In addition, as far as the relative impact social sustainability on individual
sector is concerned, the findings suggest that engaged governance and social justice &
equity among the four constructs of social sustainability that has positive and significant
association with customer retention. All four chosen constructs for social sustainability i.e.
social capital, infrastructure, engaged governance and justice & equity are positively
correlated with cooperation, where as with top management commitment which act as
moderating variable shows positive link us with engaged governance, social capital and
infrastructure. The implication of this finding is that hotels with a given magnitude of social
sustainability would outperform those on customer feedback, cooperation and top
management commitment. On the other in hospitals engaged governance, social capital,
social justice & equity and social infrastructure has positive impact on customer feedback
which is used for the measurement of customer satisfaction.

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88 Globalization and Responsibility

This study is a valuable source to those companies struggling with the issues of successful
implementation of social sustainability techniques and they will be better able to benchmark
themselves against the best practices found in the study. Reading of this study helps
business professionals and practitioners to realize the critical importance of certain
performance management related concepts in order to set an improvement plan for non-
performing areas. Finally, this study can be the base for the development of standard criteria
for assessing “societal concern progress”.

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 Globalization and Responsibility
Edited by Dr. Zlatan Delic

ISBN 978-953-51-0655-5
Hard cover, 166 pages
Publisher InTech
Published online 29, June, 2012
Published in print edition June, 2012

The book "Globalization and Responsibility" consists of 8 chapters. The chapters in the book offer a
decentered and dynamic terminology. They show that globalization consists of not only an objective process,
but also of a lot of statements that define, describe and analyze the different experiences of the process. The
chapters are written by authors and researchers from different academic disciplines, cultures and social
contexts, therefore different experiences and scientific analyses on the consequences of globalization have
been unified, starting from the multicultural and social epistemology to ethics of responsibility. Each chapter
can be read separately, but in a complex, interconnected global universe of intertextuality of our world.

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Khuram Shehzad Bukhari, M. Ishaq Bhati, Hayat Muhammad Awan and Amna Wahid (2012). Strengthening
the 'Social' in Sustainable Development: Finding the Impact of Social Sustainability in Business Performance of
Hospitality Sector of Pakistan, Globalization and Responsibility, Dr. Zlatan Delic (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-0655-
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