Stages of Corporate Sustainability: Integrating the Strong Sustainability Worldview

Abstract

Businesses are increasingly adopting sustainability, yet the environment continues to decline. This research responds to Dyllick and Muff’s assertion that this paradox is caused by a constricted understanding of the meaning of corporate sustainability, lack of inclusion of constructs from related streams of literature, and failure to integrate micro and macro perspectives of sustainability. The current research addresses these concerns through an integration of 22 micro- and macro-level models of stages of development from literature in corporate sustainability, corporate social responsibility, environmental management, and sustainable development. This integration results in a new unified model of stages of corporate sustainability that broadens the current narrowly constricted understanding of corporate sustainability, extends the paradigm of corporate sustainability beyond the business case and into the realm of ecological science and strong sustainability, and sheds light on the paradox.