Sustainability performance assessment framework: a cross-industry multiple case study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Increase in consumer awareness, and criticism from a multitude of stakeholders are often the cause of enormous pressure on organizations to take sustainability initiatives in order to minimize the ecological and social impacts of their businesses. Consequently, they are expected to track, measure, improve, and report financial as well as the non-financial performance of their operations. The main objective of this article is to understand the current state of sustainability-related performance assessment, in general, and examine the sustainability-related information disclosure by industrial corporations, in particular. The analysis of existing standards, guidelines, scientific literature, and cross-industry multiple case study identified a significant gap in the sustainability-related performance assessment between literature and practice. Also, it revealed a clear lack in the availability and use of standardized sustainability performance measurement systems. Furthermore, we identified that corporations publishing sustainability reports disclose higher quality information than corporations publishing their sustainability efforts only as a part of their annual reports. In total, we identified a coherent and consolidated list of 89 indicators for the sustainability performance evaluation of industrial corporations. Moreover, we developed a framework to assess the sustainability performance of organizations within a supply chain as well as the overall supply chain sustainability performance. It will assist industrial decision-makers to benchmark their organization’s sustainability performance and implement strategies to improve the overall sustainability of their businesses.