Search results

This experimental study examined whether sustainability performance measures matter in managerial appraisal and bonus decisions. Participants received financial and non-financial information about four branch managers of a commercial bank, with different combinations of sustainability and financial performance. Participants perceived sustainability measures as being less important than financial ones; still, the experiment revealed that sustainability performance had some impact on appraisal and bonus decisions (albeit it mattered less than financial performance). Evaluators seemed to penalize inferior sustainability performance less than they penalized inferior financial performance. They also seemed to reward sustainability success less than financial success. These findings have practical implications for the implementation of sustainability measures in managerial evaluation systems. The experimental results indicated that incorporating these measures in evaluations does not necessarily mean they will have a sizable effect in decision-making. Results from a companion experiment suggested that organizations using a sustainability balanced scorecard for appraisal and bonus purposes might benefit from an increased emphasis on communication and evaluator training, with a focus on how sustainability performance impacts the attainment of strategic objectives.

The extant literature provides much-needed support to understand marketing accountability and how marketing actions are related to financial performance (FP). However, we have limited understanding of the relationships between marketing actions and firms' social performance (SP) and environmental performance (EP). Understanding these links is critical to enhancing sustainable FP, SP, and EP. Moreover, the literature provides limited understanding of the measures by which SP and EP may be operationalized, or the data necessary to reach a conclusion. This study bridges these gaps by extensively reviewing the extant literature to offer a set of measures and data sources to operationalize SP and EP, and empirically show their relationships with marketing actions. We find that greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, environmental disclosure score, waste reduction, energy consumption, and recycling are prominent measures of EP, and that social disclosure score, philanthropy or community spending, and diversity of gender and race are prominent measures of SP. The KLD, ASSET4, and Bloomberg are prominent sources of data that can be used to operationalize SP, to which CDP may be added for EP. We also show that marketing actions positively affect EP and SP. This study contributes to the extant literature on SP and EP by identifying measures and data sources and linking marketing actions to both performance types. It contributes to policy development by identifying the importance of EP and SP and how marketing actions can help achieve such performance.

This paper aims to identify and empirically analyze useful and applicable metrics for measuring and managing the sustainability performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

To achieve the objective of the paper, potential metrics were adopted from previous research related to industrial sustainability and an empirical analysis was carried to assess the applicability of the metrics by collecting empirical data from Italian footwear SMEs using a structured questionnaire. The SMEs were selected using a convenience sampling method.

The results of the within-case analysis and the cross-case analysis indicate that the majority of the metrics were found to be useful and applicable to each of the SMEs and across the SMEs, respectively. These metrics emphasized measuring industrial sustainability performance related to financial benefits, costs and market competitiveness for the economic sustainability dimension; resources for the environmental sustainability dimension; and customers, employees and the community for the social sustainability dimension.

Apart from the within-case analysis and cross-case analysis, it was not possible to conduct statistical analysis since a small number of SMEs were accessible to collect empirical data.

The findings of the paper have considerable academic, managerial and policy implications and will provide a theoretical basis for future research on measuring and managing industrial sustainability performance. By providing a set of empirically supported metrics based on the triple bottom line approach (i.e. economic, environmental and social metrics), this paper contributes to the existing knowledge in the field of industrial sustainability performance measurement.

The primary aim of this paper is to develop a reference model for measuring corporate sustainability that can be used by organizations to integrate sustainability measures into their current performance measurement system, helping them to embed sustainability into daily activities and to forge a sustainability culture. A secondary intent is to present a critical analysis of some well‐known sustainability measurement initiatives, showing their strengths and shortcomings.

The approach employed to develop the reference model described in this paper is a qualitative analysis of the complementarity, shortcomings and strengths of eight well‐known sustainability measurement initiatives alongside an extant corporate sustainability literature review.

The research carried out has found that there is not a single initiative analyzed that tackles all sustainability issues and in fact there is no consensus around what should be measured and how. The main divergences are related to the following aspects: different criteria are applied by the initiatives to classify issues between dimensions; same impacts are evaluated at different levels of a cause‐effect relationship continuum by the same initiative; disagreement about the groups of stakeholders a company should engage and assessing the company impacts that should be taken into account (direct only or those of its whole value chain). Moreover, the way in which most initiatives measure sustainability performance is not the most adequate to embed it into the performance measurement systems, since they evaluate sustainability via presence of management practice and employ absolute values indicators rather than result‐oriented measures and ratio indicators that are more adequate for internal decision making. In this context, a sustainability measurement model was developed that is more comprehensive, objective and value‐oriented, constituting an attempt to shed light on these problems.

The major limitation is the fact that the proposed model does not provide any guidance to select the sustainability key issues for an organization to be integrated into its current performance measurement system. It mainly provides a very comprehensive set of sustainability issues and measures that could be used.

This paper sheds light on some sustainability measurement current challenges – lack of consensus of what should be measured and how – and sustainability embedment into daily activities. Academics will find it useful in their research efforts since it presents a broad review of sustainability concepts as well as an analysis of strengths and shortcomings of all and each sustainability initiative focused. Practitioners will also find it useful as a tool to better understand the sustainability concept, to start measuring sustainability performance, to integrate it in, as well as to evaluate, their current performance measurement systems.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology to identify sustainable supply chain key performance indicators (KPI) that can then be used for sustainability performance evaluation for suppliers.

Initially the complexity of sustainable supply chain performance measurement is discussed. Then, a two-stage method utilizing neighborhood rough set theory to identify KPI and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to benchmark and evaluate relative performance using the KPI is completed. Additional analysis is performed to determine the sensitivity of the KPI set formation and performance results.

The results show that KPI can be determined using neighborhood rough set, and DEA performance results provide insight into relative performance of suppliers. The supply chain sustainability performance results from both the neighborhood rough set and DEA can be quite sensitive parameters selected and sustainability KPI sets that were determined.

The data utilized in this study are illustrative and simulated. Only one model for the neighborhood rough set and DEA was utilized. Additional investigations using a variation of rough set and DEA models can be completed.

This tool set is valuable for managers to help identify sustainable supply chain KPI (from among hundreds of potential measures) and evaluate sustainability performance of various units within supply chains, including supply chain partners, departments, projects and programs.

Sustainability incorporates many business, economic and social implications. The methods introduced in this paper can help organizations and their supply chains become more strategically and operationally sustainable.

Few tools and techniques exist in the sustainable supply chain literature to help develop KPIs and evaluate sustainability performance of suppliers and the supply chain. This paper is one of the first that integrates neighborhood rough set and DEA to address this important sustainable supply chain performance measurement issue.

This paper provides a structured literature review of sustainability in purchasing and supply management, moving beyond the traditional environmental and social sustainability. The paper reviews the concept of sustainability at three levels of inter‐organizational analysis – i.e. dyad, supply chain and network. The paper distils the nature and scope of existing research and synthesizes measures used to research sustainability across organizational boundaries.

This literature review systematically analyzes existing literature. In particular, the review focuses on definitions and measures of sustainable purchasing and supply management to obtain an accurate view of current research.

This paper uncovers two distinct trends in the type of research carried out. First, internal or dyadic issues are in focus and second, a tendency to deal with environmental, as opposed to social, sustainability. Despite the need to look beyond the dyad given the risks associated with the extended network, few studies do so in any of the sustainability dimensions.

This review is limited by the method employed focusing on definitions and measures. Although the review considers supply chain and network research, it does so purely from a purchasing perspective, thus excluding issues such as logistics and transport.

The paper identifies areas open to future research and provides practical insights into how sustainable purchasing and supply are measured. It also synthesizes existing measures of sustainability at different levels and organizes these into a taxonomy.

The paper examines studies across multiple levels of analysis and integrates multiple fields of knowledge to show how research on sustainability in purchasing and supply is structured.

This article identifies current performance measurement practice within state, territory and federal government departments in Australia with a particular emphasis on the importance of sustainability performance measures. Whilst voluntary sustainability reporting by private sector organisations aligned, for the most part, with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines is growing, there is little sustainability reporting by organisations in the public sector. This raises questions as to the extent to which public sector sustainability performance is managed. This research aims to assess the use of sustainability performance measures for supporting organisational performance improvement.

A mail out survey approach has been adopted within government departments.

The performance measures utilised by organisations to a great extent were in the areas of cost efficiency and quality measures and those utilised to least extent were for learning and growth measures and to satisfy legislative requirements and manage programs. Sustainability, environmental or social responsibility measures are the least used performance measures, and those utilised are mainly measures of employee diversity and non-financial economic aspects that are identified.

The public sector is unlikely to adopt comprehensive sustainability performance measures while they remain voluntary and while there is no perceived need to be competitive in these areas. Either mandatory reporting is required or some form of competitive process based on performance measures implemented.

The findings make a contribution to the academic literature on sustainability performance measures in public sector organisations and point to policy measures that may lead to improvements in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the academic literature on sustainability performance measurement for sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) published over the past 20 years. The development and current state of instruments, concepts and systems to measure and manage sustainability performance are examined and research gaps are identified.

A systematic literature review is conducted spanning two decades of publications in peer-reviewed academic journals. The publications are analyzed with regard to frequency and bibliometrical metrics and research content.

The research examines the development of the field over 20 years, which has witnessed a steep rise in related publications only for the past five years, indicating a late interest in the area compared to other sustainability topics. Social performance measures entered the discussion particularly late, whereas economic and environmental measurement almost exclusively dominated the field for the first few years.

The authors identify research gaps and discuss future directions for research. The analysis shows how the research area develops from a topic dealt with by a small group of interested researchers into a broader research field acknowledged in the scientific community.

Findings underline the importance of measuring performance for sustainability management of supply chains. The review identifies what measurement and management tools are discussed in the literature over time.

This is the first literature review on sustainability performance measurement for SSCM summarizing the development over the time span of 20 years.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise and develop a scale for measuring employees’ perception on the sustainability of service organisations. With several companies adopting sustainability initiatives, it is prudent to measure the sustainability performance of those companies. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the sustainability measures and its associated challenges, this paper attempts to develop a scale to measure employees’ perception of sustainability of an organisation.

A structured questionnaire was developed and 977 samples were collected based on snowball sampling method. For scale development, this study randomised 586 samples to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and used the remaining samples for validation using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The existing literature on sustainability focusses on three dimensions, namely, economic, social and environmental sustainability measures. This paper explored the similarities of the three dimensions to serve as critical determinants for measuring employees’ perception of sustainability with the collected data from service industries. The EFA revealed that there were six factors for organisational sustainability with 26 questionnaire items. The six factors are as follows: environment management, employee-related sustainability, public related sustainability, financial sustainability, pollution control measures and governance sustainability. The identified factors were tested using CFA and the results are discussed.

This paper will be beneficial for the academicians in sustainability and the policy-makers as it provides a scale to measure employees’ perception on the sustainability of an organisation. This paper adds value to the research by providing a six-factor measurement model for organizational sustainability of selected service industries.

The paper is highly beneficial to the organisations to measure employees’ perception on sustainability and ascertain their position in supporting the holistic development of environment and society, thereby improving the goodwill and reputation of the organisation.

This paper provides insights about measuring employees’ perception on organizational sustainability. A six-factor measurement model has been proposed for organisational sustainability.