Abstract
Corporate sustainability (CS) has many advantages such as enhancing brand value, providing reputation, and also focuses on gaining the trust of stakeholders. This is a qualitative exploratory study; its goal is to understand how CS research has changed over time. The most cited articles were selected from the journals indexed in SSCI (2000-2019). One hundred and two articles were selected and analyzed by content analysis method. Nature of typical samples, major themes, and research methods used were sought to investigate in CS research. Results showed that there was some scarcity in studies choosing a particular country as a sample. There were no articles in areas important for sustainability research. Besides, index types are barely used in articles. Some subject areas have attracted attention for years and haven't lost their popularity, but some remained in the background. The most used method was content analysis.
TopThe Concept Of Corporate Sustainability
In the late 1970s sustainability was used for the first time in USA with financial and social policy, and it was defined in terms of a transition from growth to a steady-state. The first book “Alternative to Growth: A Search for a Sustainable Future” in this field wrote by Dennis Meadows in 1977 but sustainability as a term was used rarely in specialized literature and not at all in widely read books, magazines, and newspapers. In the 1980s, government agencies used the sustainability concept, and also governments promoted sustainability policies (Kidd, 1992).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Corporate Social Responsibility: Corporate social responsibility aims to contribute to society by participating in or supporting volunteering practices.
Global Reporting Initiative: GRI is a guide, and its main function is that companies can report the environmental, social, and economic results of their activities and products or services.
Corporate Environmental Sustainability: Environmental sustainability is avoiding the reduction of ecological value and the interaction of economic assets in a harmless way with nature.
Corporate Economic Sustainability: Corporate economic sustainability is the inclusion of social and environmental worries in commercial activities.
Sustainability Reporting: An evaluation using a set of indicators is the oldest approach to measuring and evaluating corporate sustainability.
Corporate Sustainability: Corporate sustainability is the capacity of a company to proceed working over a long period, depending on the sustainability of its stakeholder relationships.
Corporate Social Sustainability: Social sustainability is improving social and human capital together in organizations.