The Social Dimensions of Corporate Sustainability: An Integrative Framework Including COVID-19 Insights

Abstract

Corporate sustainability is considered a fundamental paradigm and solution in creating a prosperous future for organizations. However, social sustainability issues and pandemic problems from COVID-19 have affected corporations and interrupted plans for sustainable development. To date, corporate sustainability frameworks have taken a relatively narrow view of this paradigm. This study highlights serious challenges to corporate sustainability while providing a framework in an attempt to enable more sustainable business practices. To fill the gap in the literature, we have developed a framework to organize and prioritize important sustainability indicators. The first phase of the study involves the classification of 45 sub-criteria of corporate sustainability under nine main categories by using a literature review and novel Fuzzy Delphi method. The resulting categories are Corporate Governance, Product Responsibility, Transparency and Communication, Economic, Environmental, Social, Natural Environment and Climate Vulnerability, Energy Consumption along with Energy Saving, and includes Pandemic COVID-19 as a new aspect of social sustainability. Next, we applied the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP) to help determine the weights and prioritizing the criteria and sub-criteria. The results revealed that the Pandemic, along with the Natural Environment and Climate Vulnerability, ranked higher among the main criteria category. Whereas, emergency response planning, social distances, modification of working hours, and just-in-time delivery are the most influencing sub-attributes among the 45 sub-barriers of different categories. Contributions of this study include new insights regarding corporate sustainability criteria and subcriteria, application of novel methods, and integrated framework for dimensions of corporate sustainability. This study is among the first of its kind to consider the COVID-19 pandemic as an essential category and social sustainability attribute of corporate sustainable business practices. Outcomes of this study can help assist scholars, corporations, and decision-makers in understanding sustainable development initiatives while simultaneously improving social sustainability practices.

Consumer usage behavior of internet-based services (IBS) in Pakistan during COVID-19 crisis from the perspective of technology acceptance model

“…Students are also using different social apps to exchange information for educational purposes. Business sustainability is one of the major concerns during COVID-19 and emergency response planning, social distances, modification of working hours, and just-in-time delivery are the most affecting factors making an impact on the corporate business sustainability (Ikram et al 2020 ; Rubab et al 2021 ).…”

Ranking Sustainable Projects through an Innovative Hybrid DEMATEL‐VIKOR Decision‐Making Approach Using Z‐Number

“…In a study conducted by Ikram et al in 2020, a number of challenges that could potentially affect corporate sustainability have been highlighted so as to prioritize significant indicators of sustainability in the literature, after which the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (F-AHP) has been employed to help determine the weights of the associated criteria. e COVID-19 pandemic has been taken into consideration as a sustainability attributor in their research [27]. Due to the importance of sustainable strategic criteria, project evaluation, and ranking of projects in portfolio project selection, in the following, studies conducted in this field are reviewed.…”

Corporate Social Responsibility in Times of Crisis: Covid-19

“…A crisis can be described in the general sense as a sequence of events (most probably unexpected) caused by internal or external factors, rapidly developing, undesired these can be threatening to the business and its environment. 19 Crisis situations present a challenge for companies and "the recent extraordinary COVID-19 pandemic is not just the largest healthcare challenge of this century but it disrupts jobs (mass unemployment or reduced working hours on the labor market), the economy (some sectors are highly affected, e.g., tourism)…" 20 In these circumstances, the concept of CSR comes to the fore, because then the social expectations of the company increase. 21 Research shows that CSR in times of crisis has "an insurance-like function that mitigates the negative impact."…”