Corporate Sustainability integration: development of a framework to map supporting approaches

Abstract

Companies have become more aware of the impact they generate on society. Some companies take up the challenge to convert this awareness in an added value to their core business activities. There is an extensive amount of Corporate Sustainability approaches (tools, instruments and initiatives) available to companies to support with the integration of CS in the core business activities. To understand the applicability of these approaches scholars have been developing frameworks by looking from outside of the company, its intentions and its structure, towards these approaches. These researches have resulted in the conclusion that the application of these approaches does not guarantee a successful integration of corporate sustainability in the core business activities of the company. To contribute to the understanding of the intentions of CS approaches and their application in businesses this article takes an inside-out perspective. A framework was developed to question the intentions of the approaches within the context of the company. The framework was validated by its application on the three most cited CS integration approaches. The conclusion of this research is that an inside-out perspective on the intentions of the CS integration approaches can complement the already existing understanding by an outside-in perspective. More specifically, mapping the three most cited CS integration approaches with the developed inside-out framework shows indeed that these three CS integration approaches have different intentions in the CS integration process and therefore emphasizes the conclusion of other outside-in frameworks that companies should use a mixture of approaches for a successful integration of CS in the core business activities. The insides of this paper can be used to improve the adoption of CS integration approaches to the continuously changing business environment and to support companies in their search for integrating CS in the core business activities.