Sustainability as an Important Tool in Organisational Management: A Review of Literature
Journal of Scientific Research and Reports · pp. 11–33 · Published 25 Sep 2020
10.9734/jsrr/2020/v26i830293Abstract
This study aims to review the existing literature on organisational sustainability to understand diverse concepts related to organisational sustainability and its evolution. To achieve these objectives, the researcher has reviewed more than one hundred and fifty peer reviewed journal articles related to organisational sustainability that were published between 1987 and 2020. Findings of the literature review confirmed that there were diverse definitions of organisational sustainability and that organisational sustainability is in the process of evolution. Further, this review of literature confirmed the importance of stakeholder engagement in sustainability related decision making at the organisational level. The long term perspective has become a key concern when implementing sustainability in organisations; it has, however, become one of the biggest sources of worry for organisational leadership in this millennium as well. National cultural values and organisational culture are also identified in the literature as influencing leadership decisions related to organisational sustainability. Hence, this literature review confirmed that there are no best solutions or strategies in achieving organisational sustainability, though managers should adopt holistic perspectives and develop innovative solutions to deal with sustainability issues unique to their own organisations. Therefore, it can be concluded that organisational leadership implemented according to a holistic perspective would facilitate excellent results in establishing organisational sustainability. Future research should be directed towards understanding organisational sustainability in a context specific manner rather than using a generalised approach.
References (91)
- 1 Strategic management a stakeholder approach
- 2 Strategy and society: the link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility [DOI]
- 3 Concepts and Definitions of CSR and Corporate Sustainability: Between Agency and Communion [DOI]
- 4 How Corporate Social Responsibility Influences Organizational Commitment [DOI]
- 5 Are We Consuming Too Much? [DOI]
- 6 Sustainability Practices and Corporate Financial Performance: A Study Based on the Top Global Corporations [DOI]
- 7 Making Sustainability Work [DOI]
- 8 Towards better embedding sustainability into companies’ systems: an analysis of voluntary corporate initiatives [DOI]
- 9 Why Do Corporations Give to Charity? [DOI]
- 10 The family business : its governance for sustainability
- 11 Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability [DOI]
- 12 Managing corporate performance [DOI]
- 13 Team Boundary Spanning: A Multilevel Review of Past Research and Proposals for the Future [DOI]
- 14 Corporate Responsibility: A Critical Introduction
- 15 Corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance: Evidence from Korea [DOI]
- 16 The Governance of Corporate Sustainability: Empirical Insights into the Development, Leadership and Implementation of Responsible Business Strategy [DOI]
- 17 Leadership: A Critical Text [DOI]
- 18 Corporate sustainability: an integrative definition and framework to evaluate corporate practice and guide academic research [DOI]
- 19 Steady-state economics: The economics of biophysical equilibrium and moral growth
- 20 CSR and financial performance: complementarity between environmental, social and business behaviours [DOI]
- 21 Corporate governance and family business performance [DOI]
- 22 Measurement of sustainability performance in the public sector [DOI]
- 23 Managing Human Resources for Environmental Sustainability
- 24 The business of sustainability: what it means to managers now
- 25 Sustainability leadership: from strategy to results [DOI]
- 26 The Action Logics of Environmental Leadership: A Developmental Perspective [DOI]
- 27 Sustainability reporting in the Austrian, German and Swiss public sector [DOI]
- 28 Does ISO 14001 work in Brazil? [DOI]
- 29 Handbook on Responsible Leadership and Governance in Global Business [DOI]
- 30 Bracketing team boundary spanning: An examination of task‐based, team‐level, and contextual antecedents [DOI]
- 31 Organizational Transformation for Sustainability [DOI]
- 32 The Positive Deviant – Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World [DOI]
- 33 Organisational factors influencing sustainability of local non‐governmental organisations [DOI]
- 34 Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography
- 35 The Promotion of Sustainable Enterprises
- 36 Competition for donations and the sustainability of not-for-profit organisations [DOI]
- 37 An Exploratory Study in Community Perspectives of Sustainability Leadership in the Murray Darling Basin [DOI]
- 38 Debate: Public Sector Sustainability Reporting-Implications for Accountants [DOI]
- 39 Creating alternative futures: The end of economics
- 40 Twenty‐first century strategies for sustainability [DOI]
- 41 Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business [DOI]
- 42 Ecological economics: principles and applications [DOI]
- 43 Mintzberg on management: inside our strange world of organizations [DOI]
- 44 Sustainability Science: A room of its own [DOI]
- 45 The ecology of commerce: a declaration of sustainability [DOI]
- 46 Embedded sustainability: the next big competitive advantage [DOI]
- 47 Corporate irresponsibility: America's newest export [DOI]
- 48 How do family firms cope with economic crisis? : Case studies about Chinese family firms
- 49 After Dot-Com, After Worldcom, After Enron, After Capitalism - After CapitalismDavid Schweickart Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002; paperback, 256 pp. ISBN 0742513009 [DOI]
- 50 Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability [DOI]
- 51 Value and Capital
- 52 Business sustainability: It is about time [DOI]
- 53 Modelling and measuring sustainable wellbeing in connection with the UN Sustainable Development Goals [DOI]
- 54 The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?
- 55 Systematic literature review on sustainable human resource management [DOI]
- 56 Integrating sustainability reporting into enterprise risk management and its relationship with business performance: A conceptual framework [DOI]
- 57 A review of ‘theories of the firm’ and their contributions to Corporate Sustainability [DOI]
- 58 The Roles of Leadership Styles in Corporate Social Responsibility [DOI]
- 59 Family firms and practices of sustainability: A contingency view [DOI]
- 60 Top managers’ environmental values, leadership, and stakeholder engagement in promoting environmental sustainability in the restaurant industry [DOI]
- 61 Harnessing Innovation for Change: Sustainability and Poverty in Developing Countries [DOI]
- 62 Understanding the Conceptual Evolutionary Path and Theoretical Underpinnings of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Sustainability [DOI]
- 63 Perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable fashion design: challenges and opportunities for implementing sustainability in fashion [DOI]
- 64 Organizational Sustainability Practices: A Study of the Firms Listed by the Corporate Sustainability Index [DOI]
- 65 Corporate sustainability in Canadian and US maritime ports [DOI]
- 66 Multinational Enterprise Strategies for Addressing Sustainability: the Need for Consolidation [DOI]
- 67 An Empirical Exploration, Typology, and Definition of Corporate Sustainability [DOI]
- 68 How to make strategic planning for corporate sustainability? [DOI]
- 69 Investment opportunities, corporate governance quality, and firm performance in the UAE [DOI]
- 70 The Corporate Sustainability Strategy in Organisations: A Systematic Review and Future Directions [DOI]
- 71 The Relationship between Corporate Sustainability Disclosure and Firm Financial Performance in Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Listed Mining Companies [DOI]
- 72 Does Sustainability Push to Reshape Business Models? Evidence from the European Wine Industry [DOI]
- 73 Drivers of selectivity in family firms: Understanding the impact of age and ownership on CSR [DOI]
- 74 A corporate sustainability maturity model for readiness assessment: a three-step development strategy [DOI]
- 75 The Changing Shape of the Strategic Problem [DOI]
- 76 Change resistance as the crux of the environmental sustainability problem [DOI]
- 77 The Place of Nature in Economic Development* [DOI]
- 78 From risk management to citizenship corporate social responsibility: analysis of strategic drivers of change [DOI]
- 79 Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Canadian family firms [DOI]
- 80 Nexus thinking in business: Analysing corporate responses to interconnected global sustainability challenges [DOI]
- 81 Corporate sustainability management under market uncertainty [DOI]
- 82 LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THEORIES IN AN EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY
- 83 CSR and Performance of Family Businesses: A Systematic Review [DOI]
- 84 The Role of Stakeholder Engagement in Environmental Sustainability: A Moderation Analysis of Chain Affiliation [DOI]
- 85 The Challenges of Eco-Leadership [DOI]
- 86 Innovative Approaches to Organisational Sustainability: State-of-the-Art and Conceptual Framework [DOI]
- 87 How social enterprises called benefit organisations fulfil the triple bottom line [DOI]
- 88 Looking for Sustainability in Not‐for‐Profit Program Delivery: An Experiment in Providing Post‐Bushfire Recovery Programs [DOI]
- 89 Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability [DOI]
- 90 Review: The World is Flat [DOI]
- 91 Does national culture affect integrated reporting quality? A focus on GLOBE dimensions
Cited by 6
Josie Rothera, Christopher Gorse, Andrew Swan · Sustainability Across the Built and Natural Environments · 2026
VISHNU PRIYA SELVARAJ, Santhi V · 2023
Showing 2 of 6 known citations — external sources report more than can currently be individually listed.
Related research
- Strategies for Achieving Corporate Sustainability through Effective Financial Advisory in the U.S. Market — shares topic coverage
- The Impact of Sustainability Practices on the Financial Performance of Listed Companies in Saudi Arabia — shares topic coverage
- Performance Measurement System Design for Integrated Thinking: Evidence from Japanese Electric Utility Providers — shares topic coverage
- Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Practices: A Systematic Literature Review — shares topic coverage
- Corporate Sustainability Reporting and Market Value Added: A Multisector Study — shares topic coverage
Article metrics
Real usage data collected on this platform.
65
Page views
0
PDF downloads
28
Outbound clicks
6
Citations
Views over time
Views by country
Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".
Traffic sources
Referring site, by host.
Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.