How do consumerism and responsible management co-exist? a study with special reference to Sri Lankan hotel industry

Abstract

In the current contemporary society, people tend to be more materialists by consuming excess of goods and services rather than consuming what exactly they need to satisfy their daily life. The key reason behind this is that people expect some extent of social status from their consumption. As Schor in an interview with Holt (2005) “Consumerism is about an attitude and an ideology, a particular way of relating to consumer goods in which they take on central importance in the construction of culture, identity and social life”. Consequently, today consumerism implies a squatter cycle of purchase, use and disposes which resulted for premature wastage. Due to the high competition, managers pushed to promote consumerism in different aspects and it results more unhealthy social and ethical issues. Therefore, it is vital for managers to study on how to form their role in a responsible way (Responsible Management) within this critical scenario.

According to Laasch & Conawa (2015), “Responsible Management (RM) assumes responsibility for the triple bottom line (sustainability), stakeholder value (responsibility), and moral dilemmas (ethics)”. It proposes the mainstream management, which is always criticized as a problem maker by provoking social injustice and environmental depletion, to convert into a problem solver. In that sense, it is required to make the conventional management a responsible one, by considering all the managerial aspects such as goals, strategies, efficiency, effectiveness, etc. towards a common goal of achieving sustainability, stakeholder value and ultimately the moral excellence. A business that acquires all those values at the same time is referred to as a prime  Corresponding Author 16 business (Laasch. et al., 2015) and in this paper, it is attempted to unfold such prevailing and potential practices of one of the flourishing industries in Sri Lanka, namely the Hotel Industry. Since the concern for sustainability has emerged globally than ever before, green concept has taken a dominant place in the corporate world. Its trickledown effect has gone up to consumerism paving the way for concepts such as “green consumerism” which is on the other hand, has been criticized to be a fancy jargon to whitewash the ongoing unsustainable consumption and production promoted by capitalists. (Hamilton, 2009, & Kahn, 2010).

When glancing at the Sri Lankan context, there are more than 2000 hotels and resorts registered under the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) which are operating all around the island, ranging from star grade international and local hotel brands to all other stop end boutique properties, proprietorships and stand-alone properties (SLTDA industry report 2018). Due to the rapid development in the tourism industry and changing lifestyles of domestic travellers towards spending weekends or vacations at hotels have created sound impact for the hotel industry to thrive their business. While this creates so much of economic value, the excess use and high wastage of resources ultimately resulted in major social and ethical implications such as energy consumption and waste generation (Gnanapala, 2016). As per the study conducted by IFC (2013) the solid waste generation by a typical hotel and categorized under food and non-recyclables (46.2 %), paper (25.3 %), cardboard (11.7 %), plastic (6.7 %), glass (5.6 %), and metal (4.5 %). Standing on this scenario, we are enthusiastic to scrutinize the contemporary dilemma of balancing the scale between consumerism and RM towards sustainability with respect to the Sri Lankan Hotel Industry.