Integrated Management Approach Towards Sustainability: An Egyptian Business Case Study

Abstract

Several studies have focused mainly on the following approach to tackle sustainable development issues at the management level: single sustainability managerial tools adoption (e.g., sustainable balance scorecard) and the “overlap” process between traditional management practices and sustainability-oriented ones. Conversely, integration as an “alignment” process between different sustainability management practices represents a research field, which is currently underinvestigated. Filling this gap, the purpose of the present study is to deepen and find empirical evidence on how sustainability management accounting, control, and reporting systems can be integrated through an alignment process. To this aim, we focused our analysis on a Mediterranean holding company, which is a well-known sustainable corporate practitioner to foster sustainable development in a socioeconomic and environmental problematic context. Therefore, we developed a single business case study analyzing an Egyptian firm to give practical evidence on the role of management accounting, control, and reporting practices in addressing sustainability issues. The analysis shows that the aligning process of different management practices involves a plurality of business aspects to manage, among them cultural and organizational ones. Despite its complexity, such a process is fundamental to pursue medium–long-term goals, ensuring sustainable firm growth and social wellbeing.

Role and implementation of sustainability management control tools: critical aspects in the Italian context

“…Companies have to define measurements and accounting systems to collect data and information to comply with norms and answer to external requirements, emphasising accountability to all stakeholders (Gray et al, 2009). Conversely, the inside-out perspective, based on the strategic relevance of sustainability, is RESOURSE-BASED THEORY (Hart, 1995;Teece et al, 1997) Typology of pressure (Herremans and Nazari, 2016;Wijethilake et al, 2017;Windolph et al, 2014;Wijethilake and Ekanayake, 2018) Management development approach (Schaltegger and Burritt, 2010;Schaltegger and Wagner, 2006;Maas et al, 2016;Rodriguez-Olalla and Avilés-Palacios, 2017) Organizational behaviour pattern (Gonzalez Gonzalez and Zamora Ramírez, 2016;Vitale et al, 2019) Tools' typology Formal Vs Informal (Battaglia et al, 2016;Caputo et al, 2017;Gond et al, 2012;Vitale, 2019) driven by strategy and commitment to social and environmental issues. It needs accounting and control systems to implement sustainable strategies into operational activities.…”

“…Transparency Vs Internal performance management (Riccaboni and Leone, 2010;Norris and O'Dwyer, 2004;Crutzen et al, 2017;Herremans and Nazari, 2010) (Herremans and Nazari, 2016;Wijethilake et al, 2017;Windolph et al, 2014;Wijethilake and Ekanayake, 2018) Management development approach (Schaltegger and Burritt, 2010;Schaltegger and Wagner, 2006;Maas et al, 2016;Rodriguez-Olalla and Avilés-Palacios, 2017) Organizational behaviour pattern (Gonzalez Gonzalez and Zamora Ramírez, 2016;Vitale et al, 2019) Tools' typology Formal Vs Informal (Battaglia et al, 2016;Caputo et al, 2017;Gond et al, 2012;Vitale, 2019) driven by strategy and commitment to social and environmental issues. It needs accounting and control systems to implement sustainable strategies into operational activities.…”

Revista Completa

“…As revistas da área da contabilidade publicaram apenas 8 artigos sobre este assunto. No período em análise, várias revistas publicaram mais que um artigo: a revista Sustainability fez 4 publicações (Moreno, 2013;Nigri & Baldo, 2018;Truant et al, 2017;Vitale, Cupertino, Rinaldi, & Riccaboni, 2019); a revista Procedia -Social and Behavioral Sciences com 2 artigos publicados (Dănescu & Dogar, 2014;Papazov & Mihaylova, 2015); assim como a Comparative Economic Research Journal e a The IEB International Journal of Finance. Também a Procedia Economics and Finance Jounal e a revista Contabilidade & Finanças fizeram 2 publicações respetivamente e (Espejo & Daciê, 2016;Oyadomari, Duque, Nisiyama, Dultra-De-Lima, & De Mendonça Neto, 2018).…”

Corporate Social Performance, Financialization, and Real Investment in US Manufacturing Firms

“…Such corporate strategy requires managers' commitment to resource allocation to sustain long-run firm growth [10,11,[13][14][15]. To this end, managers should efficiently conduct their business with an integrated approach including sustainability criteria into planning and control mechanisms, decision-making processes, and performance measurement systems, as well as reporting [71]. Managers should be focused on the achievement of both short-and long-term goals, being compliant with the expectations of all stakeholders and pursuing a durable profitability aimed to corroborate the firm's survival [72][73][74].…”