Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a minimum set of indicators to be measured by industrial companies to represent the triple bottom line (TBL) approach. Design/methodology/approach The research is both descriptive and quantitative. Three hypotheses establish associations among the degrees of use of TBL indicators and their different degrees of use in firms. The authors used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate the scale and structural equation modelling to represent the final measurement model. The survey gathered 149 industrial companies. Findings The results pointed out that there are positive associations among the degree of use of environmental indicators and social indicators, economic, environmental and social indicators have different degrees of use in firms, a positive association between the degree of use of environmental and social indicators and the use of economic indicators was not confirmed. The findings suggest how to measure sustainable performance for industrial companies and highlight the differences in the degree of use for the three dimensions of TBL. Research limitations/implications The limitations refer to the non-probabilistic sample, applied in a specific context, industrial companies. Practical implications This set of indicators is intended to be used by industrial companies as a reliable instrument to sustainable performance assessment of the current stage of the TBL deployment and provide alternative approaches to address specific issues related to the environmental, social and economic sustainability. Social implications The results offer tangible results for measuring and reporting firm’s social and environmental performance. Originality/value This paper intends to offer an integrated and consistent way of measuring sustainability in industrial companies.
Highlights
Sustainability, despite its inherent difficult to be properly defined (Lélé, 1991; Glavič and Lukman, 2007), has become a major issue when seen from an organisational perspective
As previously pointed out by several authors (e.g. Atkinson et al, 1997; Neely et al, 2002; Epstein and Roy, 2003), since sustainability has had its role increased in several aspects of management, one issue has arisen: how to better understand the way sustainability has been taken into account in terms of performance measurement by the firms? In order to find an answer to this question, numerous studies have dealt with how companies could turn firm’s sustainability performance into a systematic and effective way (Veleva and Ellenbecker, 2001; Warhust, 2002; Azapagic, 2004; Singh et al, 2012; Krajnc and Glavič, 2005; Searcy, 2009)
5.1 Sample characteristics Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America. It is known for representing the first letter of the five countries from the BRICS acronym
Summary
Sustainability, despite its inherent difficult to be properly defined (Lélé, 1991; Glavič and Lukman, 2007), has become a major issue when seen from an organisational perspective. In order to find an answer to this question, numerous studies have dealt with how companies could turn firm’s sustainability performance into a systematic and effective way (Veleva and Ellenbecker, 2001; Warhust, 2002; Azapagic, 2004; Singh et al, 2012; Krajnc and Glavič, 2005; Searcy, 2009) Once it has become clear the need for a paradigm shift towards a sustainable performance measurement, a new way to define organisation’s sustainable performance has advanced, the triple bottom line (TBL) approach (Elkington, 1998; Harris et al, 2001; Pava, 2007; Norman and McDonald, 2004; Colbert and Kurucz, 2007). Studies depict sectors such as minerals (Azapagic, 2004); textiles (Zamcopé et al, 2012); agricultural (Guttenstein et al, 2010); oil and gas (Infante et al, 2013; Hourneaux et al, 2017); and steel (Singh et al, 2007)
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