Work

A Universal and Actionable Measure of Corporate Sustainability for Strategic Decision Making

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Managers require a universal, comparable, and decision‐useful measure of corporate sustainability that can reliably inform business strategy, yet such a tool remains absent in the literature and current practice. This paper introduces a comprehensive and operational metric—grounded in Goertz's Basic Framework for developing social science concept and fuzzy logic—that defines what full sustainability represents and offers a standardized approach to measuring it. The theoretical foundation frames sustainability as a set of necessary, noncompensatory dimensions, and the methodology operationalizes it into a structured indicator system with a fuzzy‐logic aggregation model. Using two illustrative cases from resource‐intensive and information technology sectors, the analysis shows how the metric identifies actionable improvement areas, guides trade‐offs, and reveals strategic priorities. By providing consistent, comparable, and disaggregated insights across the environmental, social, and economic dimensions, the metric supports strategic decision‐making and helps managers prioritize actions and navigate constraints and trade‐offs, as well as conveys overall corporate sustainability performance into a single interpretable ratio.

Source: Business Strategy and the Environment

DOI: 10.1002/bse.70673

Authors: Mariapia Pazienza, Martin de Jong, Dirk Schoenmaker

Institutions: Erasmus University Rotterdam, Centre for Economic Policy Research

Language: English

Topic: Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Subfield: Strategy and Management

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,480