Corporate sustainability reporting: An innovative tool for the greater good of all

Most publicly traded companies issue sustainability reports—also known as corporate social responsibility reports—that contain an extraordinary amount of multidimensional (e.g., environment, human rights, labor practices and decent work, product responsibility, society) longitudinal quantitative and qualitative data that is available to the public. Unfortunately, corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports are vastly underutilized due to perceived complexity. This article explains the Sustainability Performance Assessment (SPA) System, a teaching and mentoring tool for assessing CSR report information. Students reported a deeper understanding of sustainability as an overall concept, sustainability from a business perspective, and multifaceted sustainability performance information presented in CSR reports. The real world research-focused SPA tool transforms sustainability from a philosophical and abstract concept to something of tangible value in everyday life for consumers, employees, and international stakeholders.     

How Does the Market Value Corporate Sustainability Performance?

This study provides empirical evidence on how corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones sustainability index, is reflected in the market value of equity. Using a theoretical framework combining institutional perspectives, stakeholder theory, and resource-based perspectives, we develop a set of hypotheses that relate the market value of equity to CSP. For a sample of North American firms, our preliminary results show that CSP has significant explanatory power for stock prices over the traditional summary accounting measures such as earnings and book value of equity. However, further analyses suggest that we should not focus on corporate sustainability itself. Our findings suggest that what investors really do is to penalize large profitable firms with low level of CSP. Firms with incentives to develop a high level of CSP not engaging on such strategy are, thus, penalized by the market.     

The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard: A Systematic Review of Architectures

The increasing strategic importance of environmental, social and ethical issues as well as related performance measures has spurred interest in corporate sustainability performance measurement and management systems. This paper focuses on the balanced scorecard (BSC), a performance measurement and management system aiming at balancing financial and non-financial as well as short and long-term measures. Modifications to the original BSC which explicitly consider environmental, social or ethical issues are often referred to as sustainability balanced scorecards (SBSCs). There is much scholarly discussion about SBSC architecture and how it can be designed to relate performance dimensions, strategic objectives and the logical links among these elements. To synthesise the widely scattered research findings and publications on the SBSC, we conducted a thematic analysis based on a systematic literature review containing 69 relevant articles spanning a period of two decades. We found that sustainability-oriented modifications of the BSC architecture are motivated by instrumental, social/political or normative theoretical perspectives. Moreover, these modifications can be mapped with a typology of generic SBSC architectures. The first dimension of the typology describes the hierarchy between performance perspectives and strategic objectives and how it is related to the organisational value system. The second dimension describes how sustainability-related strategic objectives are integrated into SBSC performance perspectives and how this is related to corporate sustainability strategy. This study contributes to the development of the emerging SBSC literature and practice and, more generally, to research on corporate sustainability performance measurement and management. We conclude with a research agenda and implications for management.     

Editorial: Special Issue on the Impact of Business Ethics on Public Life

Even though management scholars have offered several views on the process of corporate sustainability, these efforts have focused mainly on the technical aspects of sustainability while omitting the fundamental role played by individual moral competences. Therefore, previous work offers an incomplete and somewhat reductionist view of corporate sustainability. In this article, we develop a holistic framework of corporate sustainability in which both the moral and technical aspects of sustainability are considered. We do so by integrating the ethical, normative perspective of the Catholic social teaching (CST) with the competitive view of the natural resource-based view. This framework highlights the importance of CST principles and ideas in developing executive moral competences such as moral sensitivity and awareness, and moral cognition and motivation. Moral competences, in turn, influence the organizational selection of environmental strategies, giving leaders the intrinsic motivation to promote both a longer-term stance on corporate sustainability efforts and a relentless search for greener business models. Such strategies move the firm closer towards achieving environmental sustainability. Hence, by bridging the individual, normative-ethical with the organizational, implementational levels of corporate sustainability, our framework provides a more realistic, coherent, and complete perspective on the complex process of achieving corporate sustainability.     

Meaning Making by Managers: Corporate Discourse on Environment and Sustainability in India

The globally generated concepts of environment and sustainability are fast gaining currency in international business discourse. Sustainability concerns are concurrently becoming significant to business planning around corporate social responsibility and integral to organizational strategies toward enhancing shareholder value. The mindset of corporate managers is a key factor in determining company approaches to sustainability. But what do corporate managers understand by sustainability? Our study explores discursive meaning negotiation surrounding the concepts of environment and sustainability within business discourse. The study is based on qualitative interpretive research drawing from symbolic interactionism (Blumer, Symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1969) which postulates that meaning in discourse is an essentially contested domain dependent upon negotiation in the Habermasian tradition of mutually respectful dialogue (Habermas, The theory of communicative action: lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason. Beacon Press, Boston 1987). Data from semi-structured intensive interviews of a small sample of senior corporate managers was analyzed to examine how corporate elites in India frame their approach to sustainability issues and respond to external pressures for deeper corporate responsibility. The findings point to the existence of a distinctively local narrative with strong potential for the discursive negotiation of personal and collective understanding of ethical and socio-cultural values that may help internalize broader sustainability considerations into corporate decision-making processes.     

Leadership styles and corporate social responsibility management: Analysis from a gender perspective

Companies' perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been only partially analyzed from an individual perspective that focuses on personal characteristics and professional backgrounds. However, a gap exists in the research on manager leadership styles and CSR perceptions from a gender perspective. Therefore, this article analyzes differences in attitudes toward various dimensions of CSR by focusing on the leadership styles—transformational, dominance, and dual perspectives—of male and female managers in Spain. A total of 391 respondents in top management positions in Spain were surveyed. The findings revealed similarities and differences between genders with respect to leadership styles and CSR perceptions by dimension using a univariate analysis. A causal model that employed structural equation modeling was also estimated. The findings suggest that for transformational and dual leadership styles, Spanish women may be more adaptable and effective at pursuing company sustainability than Spanish men. However, dominance leadership was found to be the worst leadership style for deploying a CSR strategy. A number of conclusions for business management can be drawn, and some directions for future research are provided.     

Perceptions on the Causes of Individual and Fraudulent Co-offending: Views of Forensic Accountants

In this paper, we review the literature on moderators and mediators in the corporate sustainability (CS)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship. We provide some clarity on what has been learned so far by taking a contingency perspective on this much-researched relationship. Overall, we find that this research has made some progress in the past. However, we also find this research stream to be characterized by three major shortcomings, namely low degree of novelty, missing investment in theory building, and a lack of research design and measurement options. To address these shortcomings, we suggest avenues for future research. Beyond that we also argue for a stronger emphasis on the strategic perspective of CS. In particular, we propose future research to take a step back and aim for an integration of the CS–CFP relationship into the strategic management literature.     

Sustainability accounting for companies: Catchphrase or decision support for business leaders?

“Sustainability accounting” and related terms are being used with greater frequency at academic conferences and in corporate practice. This raises the question of the relationship between accounting and sustainability and the role of accounting for sustainability, as well as what could be understood by sustainability accounting. The paper reviews the literature on sustainability accounting from an information management perspective and distinguishes different interpretations of sustainability accounting.     

Recognizing Ethical Issues: An Examination of Practicing Industry Accountants and Accounting Students

The academic debate why and how companies are dealing with sustainability is dominated by two main arguments—the profit-seeking and the legitimacy-seeking view. While the first argues that companies (only) establish sustainability management measures if this helps to increase their economic success, others emphasize that companies predominantly react on societal pressure dealing with sustainability (only) to secure legitimacy. Whereas both lines of argument have gained a lot of attention in academia, little is known about their relative importance in shaping corporate practice. This papers aims to fill this gap with an empirical analysis of corporate practices of large companies in ten countries worldwide. To capture the organizations’ rationale in sustainability management practice, we systematically applied various measures related to actors and operational activities focusing on the companies’ intention to pursue sustainability management, the integration of sustainability management to the core business, and the actual implementation of related measures. Overall the findings indicate that seeking legitimacy dominates corporate sustainability management practices.     

Corporate sustainability and organizational culture

The concept of corporate sustainability has gained importance in recent years in both organizational theory and practice. While there still exists a lack of clarity on what constitutes corporate sustainability and how to best achieve it, many scholars suggest that the pathway for the adoption of corporate sustainability principles leads via the adoption of a sustainability-oriented organizational culture. In this paper, we provide a closer examination of this suggested link between the cultural orientation of an organization and the pursuit of corporate sustainability principles. Specifically, we seek to assess (1) what constitutes a sustainability-oriented organizational culture, (2) whether it is possible for organizations to display a unified sustainability-oriented organizational culture, and (3) whether organizations can become more sustainable through culture change. Directions and challenges for practical management and future research are identified and outlined.     

Corporate sustainability in action

Recent developments in management have highlighted the need for research on corporate sustainability strategies at the value chain level and in particular in the context of franchising. Although franchising is a widespread phenomenon, there is little empirical evidence of how companies approach the issue. By employing a multi-method research approach, this study explores the importance that franchisors assign to sustainability and the way they deal with it. Our findings show that franchisors adopt three main different sustainability strategies, with an increasing relevance of social sustainability as an enabler of environmental sustainability. The study sheds some light also on the interplay between the franchisor–franchisee relationship features and the company's approach toward sustainability. Preliminary propositions are presented as a starting point for further research in this area.     

The dark triad and corporate sustainability: An empirical analysis of personality traits of sustainability managers

Middle managers responsible for sustainability operationalize top management decisions on the organization's social and environmental activities. With their focus on sustainability, they could be expected to consider ethical issues particularly well in their decisions and to possess ethical personality traits. While earlier research has focused on top management this paper examines the influence of personality traits of middle managers on their corporate sustainability preferences. Based on a primary survey sample of 204 professionals responsible for sustainability in their company, we study the relationship between dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) of sustainability managers and their environmental and social responsibility preferences. The analysis shows that managers who score higher on the dark triad personality scale are less concerned about environmental and social responsibility issues. The business environment, analyzed in a cross-cultural comparison between the United States and Europe, and the organizational context function as a moderator of the influence of personality traits on sustainability preferences. The results suggest that dark triad personality traits should be considered in recruitment and assessment processes of middle managers responsible for corporate sustainability.     

A Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices in Canada

There is a growing body of research on the theory and practice of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). However, relatively little research has been conducted on the extent to which corporations have integrated sustainability principles into the management of their supply chain and the evaluation of supplier performance. The purpose of this article is to explore the extent to which corporate sustainability principles are integrated into supply chain management (SCM) in corporations. Canada is used as a case study in this article. The study included a content analysis of one hundred Canadian corporate sustainable development reports and in-depth interviews with 18 Canadian experts on SSCM. The article highlights the wide array of ways in which Canadian corporations address SSCM issues. Amongst other topics, issues associated with supply chain governance, standards for SSCM, collaboration with suppliers, performance measurement, and accountability within the supply chain are explored. The findings reveal that there are many challenges in integrating sustainability into SCM. These challenges shed light on possible future directions for research in SSCM. This article underlines the need for research that reflects the interconnected nature of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability, particularly as it relates to measuring supplier performance on sustainability initiatives.     

Instrumental and Integrative Logics in Business Sustainability

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business.     

The Ethics of the Living Wage: A Review and Research Agenda

To date, business ethicists, corporate social responsibility scholars as well as management theorists have been slow to provide a comprehensive and critical scrutiny of the Living Wage concept. The aim of this article, therefore, is to conceptualize the living wage (LW) in its philosophical as well as practical dimensions in order to open up the ethical implications of its introduction and implementation by companies. We set out the legal, socio-institutional and economic contexts for the debates around the LW and review arguments for, and against, it. Key philosophical arguments from the perspectives of sustainability, capability and externality are invoked and discussed in order to demonstrate the issues and challenges involved for companies, state and civil society actors. Relevant examples from the private sector are examined to demonstrate some of the practical issues involved when the LW is introduced by employers. The article also recommends avenues for a research agenda into the LW for business ethicists, CSR and management researchers in contexts such as the UK, where a voluntary, rather than mandatory, approach to the implementation of the LW is adopted.     

The social construction of global corporate citizenship: Sustainability reports of automotive corporations

What does global corporate citizenship mean? In the absence of formal definitions, a place where understandings of corporate citizenship can be found is corporate texts. From the perspectives of sociological institutional theory and strategic legitimacy theory, we utilized critical discourse analysis as a methodology to study the corporate sustainability reports of multinational automotive corporations. We observed isomorphic themes that constitute socially constructed expectations of global corporate citizenship regarding climate change. We also observed heterogeneity in how these themes are manifested. We examined the rhetorical features of these reports as ways that corporations strategically position themselves in the global marketplace.     

Exploring the Relationship Between Business Model Innovation,Corporate Sustainability,and Organisational Values within the Fashion Industry

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between business model innovation, corporate sustainability, and the underlying organisational values. Moreover, the paper examines how the three dimensions correlate with corporate financial performance. It is concluded that companies with innovative business models are more likely to address corporate sustainability and that business model innovation and corporate sustainability alike are typically found in organisations rooted in values of flexibility and discretion. Business model innovation and corporate sustainability thus seem to have their origin in the fundamental principles guiding the organisation. In addition, the study also finds a positive relationship between the core organisational values and financial performance. The analysis of the paper is based on survey responses from 492 managers within the Swedish fashion industry.     

Chief executive officer ability and corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure

This study explores the impact of CEO ability on corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure. We take samples from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and use the ordinary least squares as a baseline regression model to check the relationship between CEO ability and corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure. Our findings are robust to different corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure measures and CEO ability. We found a positive association between CEO ability and corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure; thus, firms with a more able CEO are more likely to disclose more corporate environmental sustainability information. Our results also found a significant negative interaction coefficient between CEO ability and CEO career concerns. As the CEO grows older, his/her ability decreases; therefore, corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure reduces. Furthermore, we document that a female CEO strengthens the relationship between CEO ability and corporate environmental sustainability information disclosure. The study results are important for understanding corporate environmental responsibility development and implementation, particularly in China.