Corporate Internalization Of Sustainability Requirements

Sustainability has become the boiling point of theoretical business discussions. At first it was only a concept everybody was talking about but no one knew how it should be materialized. Now we can understand how and why companies are inclined to follow the principle. This gives the policy makers and other stakeholders the tools to alter market conditions in ways that more and more companies accept the requirements of sustainability. Several levels of sustain-ability have been identified and now the discussion is shifting towards achieving a common ground how to measure sustainability. Since sustainability is such a broad concept and it is very dependant on the factors of the given industry the analyzed company is operating in, two major ways to measure the companies’ performance were identified: • One way, which is propagated by Barrett, is to look at the values the company internalized. • The other way is to try to define a commonly accepted framework of requirements and then apply this framework to measure the performance of the specific company. The future will tell which method will be embraced but my bet is on the one which offers clear-cut, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-implement solutions to companies.