Sustainability management: insights from the Viable System Model

Abstract

A review of current literature on sustainability standards reveals a significant gap between their adoption and the implementation of sustainability into every level of the organisation. In this paper, it is argued that in order to overcome this challenge, an appropriate model of an organisation is needed. The Viable System Model (VSM) is proposed as such a model and, in order to illustrate this argument, it is used to interpret the ISO 26000 standard on Social Responsibility (SR). First, the VSM theory is introduced and presented by modelling the hypothetical company Widget Co. Then, the clauses of ISO 26000 are mapped on the Widget Co. model, together with detailed descriptions and examples on the organisational and managerial implications of its adopting the standard's guidelines. The result is the identification of generic SR functions that need to be performed by the various organisational governance systems, as well as their dynamic interrelations, thus clarifying implementation issues. Moreover, by identifying different SR management layers, VSM is suggested as a way forward to develop an integration model for SR issues and respective sustainability tools. Finally, a discussion is given on the implications of using this approach to integrate sustainability standards; and the way this research contributes to recent developments in sustainability research.

Integrating Sustainability in Organisations: An Activity-Based Sustainability Model

“…Hediger's idea [28] is also noteworthy: sustainability should maximise corporate value without depreciating with the passage of time [9,27,29]. This approach is mainly developed through the concept of Corporate Sustainability (CS) [30,31] or CSR [32].…”

“…A large number of tools, indicators, and models have been designed and identified to assess an organisation's sustainable performance or the integration of sustainability in an organisation, based on different approaches and areas of knowledge. These approaches can be classified based on their objectives, performance [34,35], strategy [36,37], or management [9,17,32,[38][39][40][41]. They can also be classified depending on the tools proposed for quantification [42][43][44][45][46][47][48], communication [49][50][51][52], or integration [12,13] (Table 1).…”

“…Morioka and de Carvalho [13] advocate for the use of the SVC in an effort to provide information on how organisations can perform their activities from an internal perspective of sustainability [32]. The analysis of the SVC is a theoretical business model developed by Porter and Kramer [1] that determines how organisations generate value and develop competitive advantages through CSR criteria [1].…”

An Integrated Diagnostic Framework to Manage Organization Sustainable Growth: An Empirical Case

“…Sustainable management is increasingly recognized as a central determinant in embracing sustainability with a clear process and steps, arguing that the success of multinational companies depended most significantly on the process quality of management systems [11,49,50]. Embracing sustainability implied changing deeply embedded customs into management systems that are sustainable and environmentally friendly and that ensure the growth requirements of the organization [49,51,52].…”

Review of Frameworks for Sustainability Implementation

“…Concerning the method used, as given in Figure , the majority of the studies, such as British Standards Institution (BSI) (), International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) (), Hahn et al (), Laurenti et al (), Panagiotakopoulos et al (), and Gallotta et al (), applied conceptual research methods to design the sustainability frameworks. The conceptual research method is the basis of theory building studies (Xin et al , ).…”