A Scoring Tool for Websites – A Case of Sustainable Organizations

1. IntroductionThere are people who aspire to leave some trace of their efforts behind, that in some way, great or small will make the world a better place for future generations. Companies have begun to realize that they too leave traces behind that affect the world at a greater magnitude than most individuals could ever accomplish. The effects of these traces could be felt for many generations afterwards on both humans and the organization itself. As a result of this realization, many companies have sought to find a way to continuously sustain both themselves and the world in order to ensure survival (Crane and Matten, 2010). The outcome of this desire to survive is the approach that many companies are using today, sustainability.Sustainability can be defined as programs, practices or initiatives that seek to increase the financial, social/community, and environmental wellbeing of a company as a whole (Xu 2009). Sustainability requires a company to consider all aspects of itself to ensure that all areas are contributing to the continual survival of the company and world in which it operates (Crane and Matten, 2010). One important aspect that should be considered when seeking to become sustainable is marketing, because it deals with the way a company and/or its products are perceived by those external to the organization (Cobos et al., 2009; Mitchell et al., 2010). A company should ensure that they are truly changing all aspects of their organization to become sustainable, not simply altering perceptions. The tools used in marketing are vast, but a tool that is growing in popularity is the corporate website, which provides for the dissemination of information to a growing population of internet users (Cobos et al., 2009). Corporate websites allow information to be provided quickly and easily to many individuals, providing a company with considerable power to affect stakeholders' perceptions of the organization. Providing that the proper sustainable initiatives are in place, marketing a company's sustainability on its corporate website could aid the organization when it is considered for awards and/or placement on lists championing their degree of sustainability. This paper identifies the score range of sustainable companies' websites based on three attributes: a) User friendly, b) Transparency and c) Content by analysing the websites using sustainability taxonomy.2. Literature Review2.1. SustainabilitySustainability has been around for a number of years now, but has only recently gained a substantial amount of acclaim and corporate support, as today most organizations highlight their dedication to the topic in some way (Veleva and Ellenbecker, 2000). One of the most widely accepted views of sustainability is the idea of the triple bottom line, which identifies three areas of sustainable development: "environmental stewardship, social responsibility and economic benefits" (Xu, 2009). However, the definition of sustainability has evolved over time as the understanding of the topic has expanded to encompass all facets of running a business, and even now continues to change as companies grasp for an even better understanding of the inclusiveness of sustainability (Werbach, 2009). This quest for a concrete definition is partially due to the desire to create better benchmarks that companies can measure themselves against to obtain an idea of how they are performing sustainably, as well as inform them of areas that could use a little tweaking (van den Brink and van der Woerd, 2004). One such benchmarking tool that is currently used is Corporate Responsibility Magazine's: CR's 100 Best Corporate Citizens, which ranks organizations on the Russell 1000 index based on their sustainability in seven areas and also ranks them on their overall sustainability based on the combined score of the seven areas: environment, climate change, human rights, employee relations, corporate governance, philanthropy, and financial (Corporate Responsibility Magazine, 2012). …