Why Corporate Sustainability Is Not Yet Measured

Mariapia Pazienza (), Martin de Jong and Dirk Schoenmaker
Additional contact information
Mariapia Pazienza: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Martin de Jong: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: Measuring Corporate Sustainability (CS) has been identified as an important enabler for integrating sustainability into corporate practices. Different methodologies and frameworks for measuring CS have been developed in the literature with limited success, as reflected by the lack of application in the real world. Among practitioners, the effort has been on developing frameworks that provide useful indicators of the different items that need to be considered for integrating sustainability. Notwithstanding the increasing attention and progress on the subject, a cohesive and applicable measure of CS across firms, industries and geographies is still missing. This paper provides an examination of the different methodologies for measuring CS, with an analysis of their merits and limitations, as well as guidance for future research focus. The findings show a failure to coherently link the mathematical measurement and data aggregation methodologies to a well-constructed concept where the linkage between the defining features and causal relations are appropriately identified. The proposed models and mathematical techniques are not able to inform on the extent to which a corporation acts sustainably because sustainability is not being measured in its highest extension, making the results narrow, non-referential and non-comparable. Furthermore, there is confusion between developing the indicators of CS, providing their measurement and enabling their integration.

Keywords: measuring corporate sustainability; corporate sustainability assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/6275/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/6275/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:7:p:6275-:d:1117039

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().