Toward a sustainability performance management framework

Abstract

Although the United Nations (UN) has continued to introduce the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address global sustainability, the world is becoming less sustainable. This is not surprising since our knowledge about effective sustainability performance management is scanty. The present study attempts to develop a sustainability performance management framework to deal effectively with the prevailing sustainability problems. It starts by introducing the “wicked” nature of sustainability problems, followed by a research methodology to build the sustainability performance management framework. The review suggests that the framework's components are related to the organizational culture of sustainability, the sustainability strategy employed by the firm, the corporate sustainability practices implemented, and the resulting outputs and outcomes in terms of sustainability performance. The connections between these elements are fundamentally critical, along with a feedback loop to address the dynamic, wicked sustainability problems. Finally, a Sustainability Performance Management framework and its associated propositions are derived, followed by future research directions and practical implications.