Understanding sustainability transformation at corporations: terms and categorization

Abstract

Sustainable business management transformation is associated with one of the biggest potentials for economic benefit and an increasing number of companies are joining the transitioning pathway. There is a research gap in both the definitions of sustainability transformation and the framework on how businesses manage skills, processes, and organizational activities to facilitate it. The focus of this research is to understand the scope of sustainability transformation in corporations, namely, how the concept of sustainability transformation has been defined and researched in the context of corporations due to their scale, impact, and exposure. Corporations are expected to lead toward true ecosystem value creation and as such, are of special interest and weight within the private sector. The research concludes that interpretations of sustainability transformation range from incremental to systemic changes, underlining the complexity of evaluating and implementing sustainability in a corporate environment.