Management of Sustainability Issues in Industry - A stakeholder perspective

The society and stakeholder demands on corporate handling of social and environmental issues have increased substantially during the last decade which has resulted in vast resources spent on developing and implementing management systems and tools for sustainability issues. An important question to consider is consequently how companies as well as their stakeholders perceive the economic, environmental and social benefits from using these systems and tools in companies. The main findings of the study is that most stakeholder groups perceive that the use of systems and tools for managing sustainability issues result in higher environmental and social performance for the company and its products but it is not likely that the economic performance of the company automatically improves by taking these actions. The main conclusion of the study is that the core of corporate strategies, management and product assessments of sustainability issues should be to deal with how environmental and social aspects influence company revenues and future market shares