Multiple Levels of Corporate Sustainability

According to Dr. Clare Graves, mankind has developed eight core value systems,1 as responses to prevailing circumstances. Given different contexts and value systems, a one-solution-fits-all concept of corporate sustainability is not reasonable. Therefore, this paper presents various definitions and forms of sustainability, each linked to specific (societal) circumstances and related value systems. A sustainability matrix– an essential element of the overall European Corporate Sustainability Framework – is described showing six types of organizations at different developmental stages, with different forms of corporate sustainability, each supported by specific institutional arrangements.     

Introduction on the European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF)

This article describes the European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF). This framework addresses complex issues such as Corporate Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Change. It is a conceptual framework based on the tradition of the quality management approach and the concept of phase-wise development. The framework is based on several theories and models, all proven individually over several decades. These theories are the Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory (ECLET) of Professor Graves, The Four Phase Model^© (Hardjono), EFQM's Business Excellence Model, Kaplan and Norton's Business Balanced scorecard, the research deliverables of the project The European Way to Excellence and the SqEME^® methodology. All these models, theories and/or studies belong to the interpretative sociology (Milwax Burell and Morgan, 1992). The aim of the ECSF is to support organizations in their implementation of Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility (CS-R) by addressing the ambiguity and complexity of these issues.     

European Corporate Sustainability Framework for Managing Complexity and Corporate Transformation

The European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF) is a new generation management framework, aimed to meet increased corporate complexity and support corporate transformation towards more sustainable ways of doing business. It is a multi-layer, integral business framework with an analytical, contextual, situational and dynamic dimension.Analytically, the framework is structured according to four focus points – the constitutional, conceptual, behavioural and evaluative perspective – providing integrative designs of complex and dynamic phenomena. The framework includes coherent sets of business philosophies, approaches, concepts and tools that structures corporate realities and generates sequences of steps in order to obtain adequate institutional structures, a road to corporate transformation and higher performance levels.