On measuring sustainability with Raine Isaksson, Mikael Johnson and Rickard Garvare at the PMA 2014 Conference

Written by Adelina Chelniciuc on June 30, 2014. Posted in News, Organisational performance

The presentation “The Crippled Bottom Line – Measuring Sustainability” was offered in the second day of the PMA 2014 Conference by Raine Isaksson, Senior Lecturer in Quality Management at Uppsala University, Mikael Johnson, Associate Professor in Business Administration at Karlstad University and Rickard Garvare, Professor of Quality Management at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.

The purpose of their research study was to explore how organizational sustainability can be operationalized while linked to global boundaries. They propose three dimensions of sustainability: Profit, Planet and People.

Isaksson, Johnson and Garvare identified and analyzed a series of Sustainability Development stakeholders and their needs in the reviewed literature. Some of these categories of stakeholders are:

• Humanity: the need consists of a good life respecting human rights
• Nature: level of habitat and biodiversity preservation
• Business: profit
• Natural resources: level of natural resource capital
• Society: prosperity in peace with equal treatment of the members

The researchers admit that some categories might overlap, as the general focus for Sustainable Development today is on humanity, so People and Planet become more important than Profit, and they are the main stakeholders to focus on.

In a case study the researchers presented, people value as utility was compared to Planet harm with focus on carbon emissions. After analyzing specific indicators, they concluded that both value and harm can be related to global limits, as global targets and goals could be set for common processes in the cement production field, for example, and companies from around the world could use them as references.

Tags: PMA 2014 Conference, Sustainability performance