Establishing Environmental and Sustainability Accounting To Creating Business Cases

Editorial Notes

Abstract

No doubt, corporations shape large parts of our life – daily and worldwide. Given this 
impact, they bear duties of shaping our markets, economies and societies in the most 
responsible possible way. Value added in its core sense is about creating value for so
ciety, and the assessment whether a product or service creates inclusive value is after 
all to be decided by society, i.e. the entirety of stakeholders and not just customers or 
another exclusive part of society. Creating value for some stakeholders only and ignor
ing other may also have rebound effects on the company, as for example the happiness 
of customers can be severely impacted and sales may decrease if media reports that the 
employees are treated badly. 
As a consequence companies, whether as suppliers of brand leaders or as original 
equipment manufacturers, are expected to prove their performance in environmental 
and sustainability terms. Sustainability management, accounting and reporting are be
coming ever more a major prerequisite for market and economic success. There is a 
growing body of evidence indicating that better environmental and sustainability man
agement is associated with better environmental and social performance, and that bet
ter sustainability performance can translate into improved corporate financial perform
ance. Saying this, I would like to emphasize that “can” translate into financial perform
ance does not mean “does automatically lead to” financial success. All claims that 
there is an automatic relationship are either idealistic and expressions of hope or they 
are communicated to blur the view on the large sustainability problems our world is 
confronted with. The effect of superior social and environmental performance on eco
nomic and financial success has to be actively managed if a company wants to make 
sure that it realizes “win-win” or triple-win potentials. Approaches to manage double 
and triple win potentials are currently discussed under the header of “business cases 
for sustainability” (e.g. Schaltegger et al. 2012).