An Interactive Sustainability Management Approach to Implement CSR Initiatives

Abstract

Facing pressure from institutional investors and other stakeholders an increasing number of executives are investing in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to improve the environmental and social performance of their companies. The paper argues that unique CSR implementation challenges impede the successful implementation of CSR initiatives when employing existing strategy implementation tools, specifically, the balanced scorecard and levers of control. To enable executives to overcome the CSR initiative implementation challenges and maximise the benefit from their firm’s CSR initiatives, the paper proposes a set of interactive CSR initiative implementation steps to complement the balanced scorecard and levers of control--the Interactive Sustainability Management (ISM) approach. By encouraging manager and employee input, discussion, reflection, and learning about how to improve the corporation’s environmental and social performance the new implementation approach helps to overcome the challenges faced by the balanced scorecard and levers of control when implementing CSR initiatives.