Delivering Sustainable Performance

With the advent of the 21st century, organisations are breaking corporate inertia and resistance in many sectors, more and more businesses are recognising the need to engage with the issue of sustainability. The Brundtland Commission's brief defines sustainable development as the "ability to make development sustainable-to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Robert W. Kates, 2005). According to Egon Zehnder International (2009), Sustainability refers here to the generally accepted definition that encompasses three inter-related forms of sustainability - economic, environmental and social. - Economic sustainability: is the ability of an organisation to maintain economic profitability by generating value from its offering of products and services. Successful organisations find a way to translate their relative competitive advantages into economic values that deliver returns to their owners.- Environmental sustainability: is the ability of an organisation to ensure that its long-run economic behaviour is not undermining its own or the broader natural environment. This recognises that natural resources have a finite capacity either for exploitation or as sinks for pollutants.- Social sustainability: is the recognition that an organisation operates within a broader social context and relies on it to prosper and survive. The social dimension of sustainability affects an organisation's activities at every step of the value chain - from suppliers' use of international labour to employee, customer and community engagement.