Hybrid process-criterion benchmarking methodology framework to support sustainability performance assessment and reporting

The conception, design, and implementation of sustainable development strategies in an organization aims at meeting and balancing economic, social, and environmental needs of internal and external stakeholders. While the principles and fundamentals of sustainability assist during the conception and design phases, the implementation process of management strategies – impacted directly or indirectly by internal and external factors – may identify areas of competitive advantages or challenges that would impede the projects and organizations’ performance targets. An organization is not an isolated entity and its performance is often compared against others in the market arena; therefore, assessment tools, benchmarking processes, and reporting strategies become essential for the understanding of the efforts made towards the implementation of plan, policies, and programs at the organization and project levels. A framework for a hybrid process-criterion benchmarking methodology is proposed in this paper. The framework integrates the Rank Xerox benchmarking process and the Wa-Pa-Su project sustainability rating system assessment methodology. The proposed hybrid process-criterion benchmarking methodology encourages the diversification in the development and implementation of sustainable and environmental rating systems in industry contexts (e.g., oil and gas, mining, heavy industrial, and energy) and aims for the improvement of existing sustainability performance assessment and reporting practices. It also assists the quantitative assessment process of advances and/or setbacks in sustainability performance and the implementation of continuous performance improvement programs.     

Perceived importance of sustainability dimensions in the Portuguese metal industry

The growing interest of stakeholders regarding the contribution of organizations to Sustainable Development is influencing organizational behavior and strategic planning. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the perception of the importance of organizational sustainability dimensions in a relevant economic sector: the metal industry. Survey data was collected from a sample of 211 Portuguese industries, and non-parametric statistical tests were used to validate five research hypotheses regarding the importance of the economic, environmental, social and cultural dimensions of sustainability. The results obtained demonstrate awareness of the sampled industries regarding all sustainability dimensions, recognizing that their importance has been increasing over the years, and prospecting that this importance will continue to increase in the future. The industries in this sample revealed different degrees of perceived importance for the different sustainability dimensions: the highest importance was given to the economic dimension, and culture was considered the least important sustainability dimension. However, the perception of the respondents is that these differences will be less relevant in the future. The results also show that companies with certified management systems reveal a higher perceived importance regarding sustainability dimensions. Also, industries with higher values of annual turnover, number of employees and export sales tend to give higher degrees of importance to sustainability dimensions. Considering the economic, environmental and social impacts of metal industries at an international level, the awareness of this industrial sector regarding the importance of sustainability is a relevant step to the commitment towards Sustainable Development.     

Conceptualizing and incorporating social sustainability in the business world

One of the most important challenges faced by business managers today is the integration of sustainability into their core functions. The contemporary enterprise is forced to leap forward from the mere adoption of green practices toward rethinking, redesigning, and redeveloping business practices in a more sustainable way. Most of the initiatives in this attempt have so far emphasized primarily the economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development and overlooked the social dimension of sustainability. As more organizations commit to sustainability, there is an increasing concern to incorporate social sustainability throughout their business operations. To conceptualize and integrate the notion, some organizations use preexisting indicators to demonstrate the value and impact of sustainability, while others look beyond the measurement of impacts by constructing their own system of indicators. This paper draws on a comprehensive literature review to determine a broadly acceptable framework of social sustainability indicators to be conceptualized and integrated into the business world. Findings suggest that economic and environmental sustainability can be driven together with core social factors including fairness and equality, poverty, health, education, delinquencies, demography, culture, and employee engagement within an organization. These results offer insight into the emerging phenomenon of formulating sustainable business strategies for organizations based on social indicators to attain the ultimate sustainable outcomes. This study is among the first to identify social sustainability indicators from societal and corporate perspectives. It offers a comprehensive social sustainability framework that may be adopted by organizations in the business world.     

Book reviews and notices

The aim of sustainable development is to balance social, economic, and environmental needs. In order to justify the decisions they make, stakeholders must quantify the different impacts found in the operations and developments of companies and/or projects throughout their life cycle. However, as some areas are subjective in nature, the quantification process of the different impacts and the assessment of sustainable development performance become arduous tasks of development, validation, and application of scientific and empirical methods with the intrinsic objective of finding an agreement among the involved parties (i.e., stakeholders). Several environmental and sustainability assessment tools, instruments, processes, and methodologies have been developed; rating systems stand out and have gained attention and credibility, as demonstrated by the vast number of certified projects around the world and the widely-known usefulness and advantages of their application. The Wa-Pa-Su project sustainability rating system presents an integrated approach to sustainability assessment by integrating three distinctive areas of knowledge: (1) sustainable development theory and fundamentals supports the ultimate goal of the rating system, which is to contribute to sustainability, with the aim of finding a path to balance social, economic, and environmental needs; (2) continual performance improvement becomes essential due to the duration of the projects, as it is critical to allow organizations or projects to improve performance over time; and (3) multi-criteria decision analysis assists with the assessment process through stakeholder engagement and participation, and the design and implementation of a criteria weighting system.     

Theorising pathways to sustainability

Using a Pathways approach, controversies over environmental and natural resource management are viewed as expressions of alternative, or competing, pathways to sustainability. This supports deeper understanding of the underlying causes of natural resource management controversies. The framework is composed of two elements: the STEPS (Social, Technological, and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Pathways approach and frame analysis. Many sustainable development dilemmas are played out in specific places and consequently, the Pathways approach is integrated with a place-based frame analysis. The resulting framework guides empirical investigation in place-based contexts. This theorising about sustainability science can be used to cast light on contested natural resource management issues, in this case mining in northern Sweden. By exposing the range of alternative Pathways to critical norms of sustainable development, we ascertain whether action alternatives are compatible with sustainable futures. The framework provides a way in which sustainability science can better understand the origins of natural resource management conflicts, characterise the positions of the actors involved, identify the potential for cooperation between stakeholders leading to policy resolution and judge what Pathways help or hinder the pursuit of sustainable development. In addition, it can enhance sustainability science by guiding integrative sustainability research at the project scale.     

Sustainable development: the challenge of implementation

This paper focuses on efforts to produce an operational definition of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ as articulated by the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). ‘Sustainability’ has become an increasingly significant environmental issue; the problems in articulating a workable concept will differ among nations and international organizations attempting to define the term. Additionally, the term encompasses the varied fields of ecology, philosophy, and economics; every discipline imparts its own bias. Various definitions are provided and the significance and difficulty of developing an operational definition of Sustainable development is discussed. For example, sustainable development has become a ‘needs'-oriented term, an entitlement that priority should be given to the needs of the world's poor. Some argue that living standards which go beyond the basic minimum are sustainable only if consumption standards everywhere have regard for long-term sustainability. Scientifically, sustainability involves replicability and regeneration through an unforeseeable future. When prices reflect social cost and there are no externalities, optimal choices will be made between present and future consumption. Much of the debate involving sustainability involves deep-rooted fears or phobias, e.g. resource depletion, ‘energy crises’ and ‘timber crises’.     

Is the economic dimension inducing the other sustainability dimensions,or is it the reverse? Perceptions from the Portuguese metal industry

ABSTRACT

In organizational sustainability, the economic dimension is recognized as having a very important role. However, the discussion regarding whether it is exclusively the economic dimension that has the power to induce the other sustainability dimensions is far from agreement. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between the economic dimension of sustainability and the other sustainability dimensions – environmental, social and cultural – in a relevant Portuguese economic sector: the metal industry. The analysis and statistical tests performed with the 211 collected answers led to the conclusion that the influence exerted by the economic dimension on the other sustainability dimensions is perceived as dominant, both in present and future perspectives. The results also show the perception that the economic dimension is equally influenced by the environmental and social dimensions, and in a less extent, by the cultural dimension, and that all these mutual influences are perceived to increase in the future. The existence of organizational management systems has a positive effect on the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions, but only for those companies with more than one certified management system. These results confirm that organizational management systems are connected to higher degrees of awareness regarding sustainability issues. Given that the great majority of the sampled industries are SMEs, the results obtained in this research demonstrate that the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions is recognized even in small-sized industries.     

Applying DPSIR to sustainable development

The DPSIR framework was devised in the late 1990s as a tool for the reporting and analysis of environmental problems, ranging in scale from global systems to localized watersheds. Since then, international organizations have begun to apply this framework to the evaluation of sustainable development initiatives, to better understand and overcome barriers to sustainability. While this may seem a logical application for an integrated environmental assessment tool, the use of DPSIR in sustainable development will likely perpetuate the least satisfactory outcomes of development. DPSIR cannot address the impact of aggregated, informal responses on the drivers and pressures related to environmental problems and sustainability challenges. This problem is not merely an oversight of the framework, but an issue that emerges within the structure of DPSIR itself through the unexamined, unacknowledged hierarchy of actors that this framework implicitly creates with its typology. Therefore, a DPSIR-centered approach is not a new direction for development within international organizations, but instead, a reproduction of existing inequalities between actors and stakeholders within current approaches.     

Embracing diverse worldviews to share planet Earth

Leading societies toward a more sustainable, equitably shared, and environmentally just future requires elevating and strengthening conversations on the nonmaterial and perhaps unquantifiable values of nonhuman nature to humanity. Debates among conservationists relating to the appropriateness of valuing ecosystems in terms of their human utility have eclipsed the more important and impactful task of expressing conservation concerns in terms that are meaningful to diverse stakeholders. We considered the wide global diversity of perspectives on the biosocial complex—the relationships and interactions between all living species on Earth—and argue that humanity's best chance for effective conservation is to take a pluralistic approach that engages seriously with the worldviews of all stakeholders. Many worldviews—particularly those in indigenous cultures—place a higher value on the spiritual and nonmaterial aspects than what is often represented by the discourse surrounding Western conservation policy. Alternative framings of the biosocial complex that recognize nature's intrinsic value can be powerful motivators for social change and for local-scale conservation efforts. At a national and international level, changing ethical framings of human relationships with nature have started influencing conceptions of human rights relating to the environment and of the rights of nature itself. This change has led to an increased role of the judiciary in promoting environmental sustainability and promoting justice for groups who are most often affected by environmental harms. We hope our essay will motivate the scientific community to change its own perception of what a sound and sustainable relationship between humanity and other species should be and will help citizens become active environmental subjects, connected to the ecosystems around them.     

Sustainability assessment of entire forest value chains: Integrating stakeholder perspectives and indicators in decision support tools

The optimization of value chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since value chains are closely linked to the satisfaction of human needs and combine different driving forces for environmental change. This article presents a methodological approach for the participatory development of value-chain wide sustainability indicator sets and their integration into a decision support tool in the specific case study of the chain “construction and refurbishment with wood”. There are numerous indicator sets for sustainable development of forests and sustainable forestry available at different levels, ranging from local, regional and national to global scale assessments. Some efforts were also made to integrate later production stages of forest value chains (such as wood processing) in the assessment scope (e.g. for chain-of-custody certification). However, no indicator set has so far been available covering environmental, social and economic aspects for the entire value chain of building with timber. This gap was closed through applied sustainability research in the project “Holzwende 2020: Sustainable future markets for wood in the building sector”.     

Assessing sustainable development in urban areas using cognitive mapping and MCDA

As interest in sustainability-related issues has increased over recent years, so too has urban sustainability risen to the fore, in academic, practitioner, and policymaking circles alike. Urban sustainability requires a balance between environmental concerns, the economy, and social development in urban areas. However, over the years, there has been an exponential increase in urban density, accompanied by increased economic activity and high levels of consumption, which have hindered urban planning and made the sustainable management of urban areas more difficult. It has therefore become increasingly necessary to combine the interests of the various stakeholders involved in – or affected by – urban planning measures, in order to achieve a balance between their needs, those of the environment and future generations, and the need for economic development. Sustainability evaluation models can in this sense be considered a baseline condition for sustainable development. However, most existing evaluation systems present limitations in terms of criteria identification and the calculation of the respective trade-offs. To address these issues, the current study aims to combine cognitive mapping and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to prioritize the determinants of sustainable development in urban areas. The advantages and limitations of our proposal are also analyzed.     

Influence of eco-innovation on Indian manufacturing sector sustainable performance

Manufacturing firms are striving to improve their sustainable performance in order to satisfy multiple stakeholders. Eco-innovation is a promising approach that decreases environmental impact and helps firms to increase their business value. There are several antecedents which help the firms to innovate and improve their triple bottom line performance. Among the antecedents, management and innovative practices are directly related to eco-innovation. It is not well known what practices and innovations help the firms to eco-innovate as well as to improve sustainable performance. Hence, the research objective of this paper is to identify the suitable combination of management and innovative practices that help firms to eco-innovate as well as to achieve overall sustainable performance. The paper develops an eco-innovation conceptual model which relates the management and innovative practices (antecedents) and overall sustainable performance (consequences) of eco-innovation using institutional theory. Using Indian manufacturing sector’s empirical data and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach, this paper determines the effect of eco-innovation’s antecedents and consequences. In the Indian context, this study suggests that the role of management practice is more significant towards eco-innovation than innovative practices. The results reflect practitioners’ view on how to increase innovation rate and to focus more on social aspects. The finding suggests that training on environmental related practices could tackle innovation and social aspects in the Indian manufacturing sector context.     

Social development benefits of hydroelectricity CDM projects in Brazil

In recent years, the concept of sustainable development (SD) has become increasingly recognized and important. Within organizations, SD is often portrayed as a balancing act and requires a combination of three elements to be considered: economy, environment, and society. Traditionally, organizational management research has been focused on economical and environmental fronts. However, social aspects are also important for organizations, especially those in emerging and developing countries. The goal of this article is to investigate the potential of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects to deliver social benefits in Brazil’s hydroelectricity sector. The investigation involved the assessment of 46 registered hydro CDM projects under the Kyoto Protocol in terms of their potential impact on the envisaged social development goals. Two case studies were also examined. Results indicate that organizations managing hydroelectric initiatives in Brazil can provide the pathway toward achieving a number of important social benefits. Successful projects were found to have good community involvement and were managed by both cooperative ventures and money-making corporations. The research also identified several challenges that are hindering hydro CDM projects from delivering more social benefits and enabled a number of recommendations to be extracted for the organizations facing these challenges.     

Planning and implementing sustainability in higher education institutions: an overview of the difficulties and potentials

Planning in sustainable development is believed to be an important element in allowing higher education institutions to set their goals and to commit themselves towards undertaking concrete actions and measures at all levels in order to implement sustainability. Yet, there is a paucity of research that has looked at the extent to which planning can support institutions of higher education to assess their performances and to determine whether the set aims have been met. This research gap needs to be met to allow a better understanding of how planning can help to promote the integration of the three components of sustainable development – economic development, social development and environmental protection in higher education. This paper explores the challenges for planning the sustainable development in higher education, also outlining the potentials lessons learned that could assist in improving Education for Sustainable Development efforts in Higher Education Institutions. Among its main results are the fact that many universities wish to pursue sustainable development, but their efforts are hindered by lack of institutional support and planning and limited emphasis on approaches, such as problem-based learning. The universities that are engaged in the field have to face many problems, varying from limited resources to lack of trained staff. As a result, integrated approaches to sustainability become difficult to implement. Finally, the paper has identified the fact that many opportunities offered mainstream developments, such as the UN Declaration ‘The World we Want’ or the UN Sustainable Development Goals are not being put to full use.     

Opportunities for better use of collective action theory in research and governance for invasive species management

Controlling invasive species presents a public-good dilemma. Although environmental, social, and economic benefits of control accrue to society, costs are borne by only a few individuals and organizations. For decades, policy makers have used incentives and sanctions to encourage or coerce individual actors to contribute to the public good, with limited success. Diverse, subnational efforts to collectively manage invasive plants, insects, and animals provide effective alternatives to traditional command-and-control approaches. Despite this work, there has been little systematic evaluation of collective efforts to determine whether there are consistent principles underpinning success. We reviewed 32 studies to identify the extent to which collective-action theories from related agricultural and environmental fields explain collaborative invasive species management approaches; describe and differentiate emergent invasive species collective-action efforts; and provide guidance on how to enable more collaborative approaches to invasive species management. We identified 4 types of collective action aimed at invasive species—externally led, community led, comanaged, and organizational coalitions—that provide blueprints for future invasive species management. Existing collective-action theories could explain the importance attributed to developing shared knowledge of the social-ecological system and the need for social capital. Yet, collection action on invasive species requires different types of monitoring, sanctions, and boundary definitions. We argue that future government policies can benefit from establishing flexible boundaries that encourage social learning and enable colocated individuals and organizations to identify common goals, pool resources, and coordinate efforts.     

A comparative decision-making model for sustainable end-of-life vehicle management alternative selection using AHP and extent analysis method on fuzzy AHP

Environmental protection and sustainable development are getting increasing attention in the automobile industries. Environmental consciousness has increased, and sustainability has become an important requirement for the management of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). The proper management of ELVs can bring improved sustainability performance for any society or organisation. There are several alternative options for ELVs management such as reuse, repair, reconditioning, remanufacturing and recycling. Environmental legislation is forcing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to manage their products at the end of their life cycle to reduce their potential environmental impact. An appropriate selection model for sustainable ELV management alternatives in the dynamic, competitive and regulatory environment can enable a firm to satisfy economic, environmental, social and technological requirements. This study proposes an integrated model to select the dimensions and criteria for evaluating sustainable alternatives for the proper management of ELVs. First, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is used to select the most important dimensions and criteria for sustainable alternative selection. Next, a hierarchy has been constructed to develop a systematic technique to solve the alternatives selection problem. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and extent analysis method on the fuzzy AHP (FEAHP) model have been used based on the hierarchy to evaluate the most suitable alternatives from the sustainability point of view. The strength of the proposed model is that it compares the results of both methods, the imprecision of experts’ opinions is considered in the evaluation process and the model is easy to use.     

Landuse experience does qualify for adaptation to climate change

The need to implement sustainable resource management regimes for semi-arid and arid rangelands is acute as non-adapted grazing strategies lead to irreversible environmental problems such as desertification and associated loss of economic support to society. In these sensitive ecosystems, traditional sectoral, disciplinary approaches will not work to attain sustainability: achieving a collective vision of how to attain sustainability requires interactive efforts among disciplines in a more integrated approach.     

Sustainable development and tourism destination management: A case study of the Lillehammer region,Norway

This paper reviews some of the literature and guidance provided for businesses considering responses to the environmental aspects and impacts of their tourist activities. It concentrates on the role of destinations and stakeholders within the destination cooperating and networking to improve environmental performance and on generating a ‘green’ image. In order to move towards a type of tourism consistent with sustainable development (sustainable tourism), it is argued that we need to see enhanced management of a destination, creating opportunities for networking and cooperation between, in particular, service providers. In a case study of Lillehammer, Norway, three projects negotiated, developed and delivered by service providers in the area are examined. These projects looked at hotel management, transport and aesthetics. Success factors are identified, including the involvement of stakeholders, the development of locally orientated codes of conduct, the role and participation of local authorities and the importance of leadership. Findings add to the body of practical help in moving destinations towards sustainable tourism.     

Portrayal of sustainability principles in the mission statements and on home pages of the world's largest organizations

Conservation can be achieved only if sustainability is embraced as core to organizational cultures. To test the extent to which the related concepts of sustainability, conservation, response to climate change, poverty alleviation, and gender equity have been incorporated into organizational culture, we compared mission statements published from 1990 to 2000 with those published in 2014 for 150 organzations, including conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), aid NGOs, government development agencies, resource extraction companies, and retailers (30 in each category). We also analyzed the 2014 home web pages of each organization. Relative to the earlier period, the frequency with which mission statements mentioned poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and a range of sustainable practices increased only slightly by 2014, particularly among resource extractors and retail companies. Few organizations in any sector had embedded either climate change or gender equity into their mission statements. In addition, the proportional intensity with which any of the aspirations were expressed did not change between periods. For current home pages, conservation NGOs, resource extractors, and government agencies were significantly more likely to acknowledge the importance of matters that were not part of their core business, but few aid agencies or retail companies promoted goals beyond alleviation of crises and profit maximization, respectively. Overall, there has been some progress in recognizing poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable practices, but gender equity and a determination to reduce impacts on climate change are still rarely promoted as central institutional concerns. Sustainability in general, and biodiversity conservation in particular, will not be achieved unless their importance is more widely apparent in core communication products of organizations.     

Sustainable cooperation as the challenge for a new coastal management paradigm

Coastal management is a collective action. As such, it depends for its effective implementation on the cooperation of a multitude of stakeholders, i.e. civic organizations, economic interest groups, environmental groups, governmental agencies, scientists and other individuals. Where ‘effective implementation’ implies the achievement of targeted objectives within targeted time horizons and ‘cooperation’ connotes that stakeholders elect to pursue cooperative strategies that may yield higher gains for all stakeholders instead of competitive strategies that may maximize individual benefits. Thus, the fundamental challenge of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) is to maximize the effectiveness of this management by maximizing and sustaining stakeholder cooperation. I submit that sustainable cooperation can be maximized and nurtured for its voluntariness only by a process-oriented, cooperative CZM. The alternative, outcome-oriented, normative CZM can force, directly or indirectly, cooperation but it cannot sustain it. My purpose in this paper, is to highlight arguments supporting this view as well as the analytical challenges of cooperative ICZM. Certain points are also viewed in the light of preliminary findings of a research project designed to probe these challenges.