Corporate sustainability strategy deployment: A case study on the implementation of corporate sustainability using hoshin kanri

Katharina E. Roche and Rupert J. Baumgartner

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2025, vol. 32, issue 1, 927-946

Abstract: Companies face difficulties when attempting to implement corporate sustainability (CS), especially linking operational activities to their overall sustainability strategy remains a main challenge. The present study applies a single‐case study approach to contribute to literature on CS implementation and to provide a framework for the deployment of CS strategies. The company under study is a medium‐sized company that has set sustainability targets using a typical management system for strategy deployment, namely hoshin kanri. The data collected is derived from company documents, observations, and 12 semi‐structured interviews with department managers and employees, and qualitative content analysis was used for data analysis. The results illustrate that clear definition of sustainability, measurability of sustainability targets, employee involvement, and motivation, and prioritization of long‐term sustainability objectives are necessary prerequisites for successful CS strategy deployment. Challenges relate to lack of time capacity (workload), specific industry‐context, and the difficulty of social impact assessment. Finally, a framework for CS implementation is proposed which incorporates stakeholder, systems, and dynamic capabilities perspectives. This research contributes to the literature linking CS strategy to practice, illustrating the related prerequisites and challenges in implementation, and provides a practical approach towards the deployment of CS strategies.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2959

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:corsem:v:32:y:2025:i:1:p:927-946

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().