Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate how the integration of new forms of sustainable control systems (SCSs) and traditional management control systems (MCSs), and the use of these control systems affect the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. A qualitative case study based on a longitudinal investigation of an Italian family firm operating in an environment-sensitive context, the intermodal transport industry, has been used to trace the company’s pathway to sustainability integration based on the Gond et al. framework. The paper enriches the Gond et al. conceptualization providing evidence of the external and internal factors relevant in affecting the organization’s pathway towards sustainability integration. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first analysis that investigates the integration of sustainability into organizational strategy in the context of family firms, from the point of view of performance management systems (PMSs).
Highlights
The last few decades have witnessed increasing pressures for organizations to behave in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion, and businesses have started to acknowledge the importance of sustainability, embracing the sustainability rhetoric in their external reporting and in their mission statement [1,2,3,4].To define sustainability, we refer to Dyllick and Hockerts, who defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of a firm’s direct and indirect stakeholders without compromising its ability to meet the needs of future stakeholders as well”; to achieve this goal, companies need “to maintain their economic, social and environmental capital base” [5]
This definition is an application at corporate level of the definition of sustainable development given by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), according to which a sustainable development is a “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [6]
By investigating the integration of sustainability into corporate performance management systems (PMSs) in a real family firm operating in an environment-sensitive industry through the Gond et al framework [1], this research provided several contributions both in theory and in practice
Summary
The last few decades have witnessed increasing pressures for organizations to behave in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion, and businesses have started to acknowledge the importance of sustainability, embracing the sustainability rhetoric in their external reporting and in their mission statement [1,2,3,4]. We refer to Dyllick and Hockerts, who defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of a firm’s direct and indirect stakeholders without compromising its ability to meet the needs of future stakeholders as well”; to achieve this goal, companies need “to maintain their economic, social and environmental capital base” [5] This definition is an application at corporate level of the definition of sustainable development given by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), according to which a sustainable development is a “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [6]. With a stream of the literature [7,8,9], we believe that, sustainability and CSR have evolved from different histories, they are pushing toward a common future They both share the same vision, which intends to balance economic responsibilities with social and environmental ones and they both have their theoretical roots in stakeholder theory. The study sheds lights on the external and internal factors affecting the sustainability integration pathway
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