Business sustainability performance: A systematic literature review on assessment approaches, tools and techniques

Abstract

For the last decades, Sustainable Development has been encouraged to be integrated into the operations of business organisations. Businesses are being blamed to cause environmental degradation and social problems because of their unsustainable activities. However, to know whether businesses are implementing sustainable strategies in their operations, a Business Sustainability Performance Assessment (BSPA) is required. As a result, many approaches, tools, and techniques have been devised to assess sustainability performance at the business level. Therefore, this study aims at identifying the various sustainability assessment approaches, tools, and techniques at the business level. A systematic literature review was conducted whereby 38 related articles from 2000 to 2021 were obtained and analyzed. Following the review, 5 different approaches were identified namely: application of established guidelines; normative framework; management system; index system; and rating/ranking system. Under each approach, there are different tools. In all, 88 tools were obtained. Furthermore, 9 techniques were identified and classified into 4 functional categories. Techniques such as Fuzzy Logic, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and Principle Component Analysis were predominantly favoured by researchers. However, there was no consensus on which method or tool is best for BSPA. A bibliometric analysis found that 60% of studies used the environmental, social, and economic dimensions for performance assessment. Results demonstrated that the application of BSPA approaches, tools, and techniques had been receiving attention across various industries and the application was more toward industry-generic context rather than industry-specific. Finally, the paper presents key research issues on BSPA and proposes future studies based on reported data.