The sustainable firm as an ethical construct

Exploring corporate sustainability integration into business activities. Experiences from 18 small and medium sized enterprises in the Netherlands

“…This growing field of concerns for companies wanting to integrate CS can also be found in the increasing scope of stakeholder sustainability requirements. First, this scope has been widened towards having to deal with direct and indirect, and internal and external stakeholders (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002;Epstein and Roy, 2001), including clients, suppliers, employees and the community (Wells, 2013). Second, recent developments by, for example, the Global Reporting Initiative, the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development show a global debate among stakeholders in which the triple issue focus of corporate values has subsequently been formalised in, e.g.…”

On corporate sustainability integration and the support of tools

“…Companies have increasingly become a key focus of attention in the sustainability debate (Cannon, 1994;Elkington, 2002;Hart, 1997), since they are perceived to be responsible for many negative impacts on the environment and on societies (Dunphy et al, 2006). Elkington (1997) proposed that the impact of the social and environmental outcomes for people, planet, and profit (i.e., triple P) should be placed on the same level of importance as the economic outcomes (Wells, 2013). Companies should proactively search for this balance as well as for the inter-relations between the impacts on triple P issues due to business processes within the life cycle of products or services, or in society, taking into account the past, current and future situation (Vermeulen and .…”