Sustainability Performance Management in Large Firms: A Qualitative Research amongst Seven Large Western European Firms

Today, more and more companies engage in sustainabl e business strategies in order to fulfill the requirements of Sustainable Development (Brundt la , 1987). The management of environmental, social as well as economic issues ha s become a key element to ensure the survival of a company in the medium to long term an d to contribute towards its ability to create stakeholders’ value (Christman, 2000; Chousa and Castro, 2006). The pursuit of sustainability in business practices has necessitated the management and assessment of corporate economic, environmental and social performances (Karatzoglou, 2006). Actually, if we consider that business perfo rmance is related to the achievement of its predetermined objectives whatever their nature and their diversity (Bourguignon, 2000), it is crucial to manage, to control and to evaluate if su stainable strategic objectives have been met or not, as well as to identify the reasons for this situation in order to continuously improve performance in the future. More than before, firms are now expected to account explicitly for all aspects of their performance, i.e. not just for their financial or economic results, but also for their social and environmental performance (Cra mer, 2002). This is what is traditionally called “Sustainability Performance Management” (Sch altegger et al., 2006). Over recent years, sustainability issues have there for progressively been integrated into the accounting and finance areas. Researchers and pract itioners have proposed to develop new tools and instruments, as well as to adapt those th at already exist, to permit the strategic and performance management of sustainability by busines es (Schaltegger and Burrit, 2006; Chousa and Castro, 2006). The objective of this paper is to understand better sustainability performance management in large firms. Based on previous research in this fie ld (such as Schaltegger and Burritt, 2000; Cramer, 2002 ; Figge et al., 2002; Schaltegger et a l. 2003, Wagner and Schaltegger 2004; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2006; Epstein and Widener, 2011), this paper reports the results of a qualitative research (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; May er nd Ouellet, 1991; Hlady Rispal, 2002) amongst seven large Western European firms. Concretely, we examine the sustainability performan ce management in these large firms by investigating why they manage, or not, their sustainability performa nce (i.e. their reasons and motivations) and how they practically operate to manage and measure it (i. . the performance management tools and systems which have been implem ent d). This research reveals that all seven firms effectiv ly manage and measure their sustainability performance with more or less complex tools (such a s the Sustainability Balanced ScoreCard). The results also suggest that, whereas all even respondents stress a strong integration of economic, social and environmental i ssues into their core business strategy, this positive statement is questioned by the observation s that, to date, only two of the sampled firms really integrate all three pillars of Sustain able Development into the individual objectives of their workers and that there is, in t he facts, very few links between social and/or