Business strong sustainability performance: Evidence from food sector

Abstract

A composite sustainability index is suggested to evaluate strong sustainability of businesses by utilizing the triple-bottom-line approach and principles of strong sustainability. On the one side, the proposed index is classified into three classical aspects of sustainability to measure financial performance, environment protection, and social justice. On the other side, it focuses on some basic concepts of environmental science in relation to carrying capacity, safe minimum standards, and critical capital mainly to design certain thresholds for indexes which businesses should attain. An application of the proposed methodology has been made to the food industry in order to draw some implications useful to overcome some of the shortcomings of previous studies. The findings show that the idea of integrating economic, social, and environmental thresholds into corporate indicators might be a good basis to evaluate the strong corporate sustainability performance and offer a comprehend signal to stakeholders.