The Materiality Balanced Scorecard: A framework for stakeholder-led integration of sustainable hospitality management and reporting

Abstract

The Materiality Balanced Scorecard is an integrated framework that links sustainable hospitality performance management and reporting, as an instrument to define, communicate and operationalise strategic sustainability objectives. We integrate the Balanced Scorecard as a well-established performance management system with the inclusiveness, materiality and responsiveness principles of the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard, to aid an organisation to respond to its stakeholder expectations. The framework provides a systemic, structured and integrated approach, and an opportunity for sustainable value creation. We test the framework with data reported by 20 of the world’s largest hotel groups, to find that current sustainability reports lack hierarchical cause-and-effect chains and hard evidence of impact at the system level. We argue that hospitality organisations can improve their management controls by addressing the quality, transparency and consistency of their sustainability response, thereby responding to sustainable development challenges without undermining their organisational viability.