Abstract
Sustainability assessment is a mainstream business activity that demonstrates the link between the organization’s strategy for and commitment to a sustainable global economy, and the prevention of economic crises. Small- and medium-sized businesses/enterprises (SMBs/SMEs) have significant effects on the European economy. However, because of a lot of restriction factors, like business risk, the high expenses of data collection and management, and the lack of resources, sustainability reporting is considered a superfluous and burdensome activity for them. The aim of this research is to propose an automated, comprehensive and simplified system for the sustainability assessment of SMEs. This system is achieved by implementing three main phases. The first phase includes key performance indicators design, which starts with the identification of various key performance indicators for comprehensive sustainability assessment, and ends with proposing an optimal set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that can encompass long-term issues and be applicable to SMEs in the EU. The second phase involves a new comprehensive method of sustainability assessment for all KPIs designed in the first phase. Therefore, a multi-criteria model, which involves four main pillars of sustainability assessment (economic, environmental, social and governance), is proposed. It gives different enterprises the ability to verify and compare their efficiency and sustainability with other companies within the same sector in an almost automated manner. In the final phase, a simple and an automated information system (WEBRIS), which provides a suitable environment for SME sustainability reporting, is developed. Finally, this system is verified in a case study of the Czech breweries sector.
Highlights
Sustainability reporting (SR) is a global trend that engages companies in the disclosure of their overall economic, environmental, social and governance impacts and efforts [1,2]
Phase 1 is indicators collection and selection. It includes determining the available, suitable and efficient set of the key performance indicators (KPIs) for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that can be used in sustainability assessment
This process starts after performing a deep study of the barriers that make the sustainability reporting for SMB/Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) a challenging process
Summary
Sustainability reporting (SR) is a global trend that engages companies in the disclosure of their overall economic, environmental, social and governance impacts and efforts [1,2]. SR is a voluntary organization’s activity, with two general purposes [5,6]: an assessment of the current state of an organization’s economic, environmental and social dimensions, and the communication of the organization’s efforts and sustainability progress to their stakeholders. It can be used for assessing corporate sustainability performance over time [7], benchmarking against other organizations [8], and demonstrating how the organization is influenced by expectations about sustainable development [9]. The first pillar of socially responsible conduct is the environment (single-pillar conception), which was later supplemented with the social element (two-pillar conception), and today’s variant includes economy as the third pillar (3P concept—People, Planet, Profit) [14]
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