Table Of ContentBusiness and the Sustainable
Development Goals
Measuring and Managing
Corporate Impacts
Edited by
Norma Schönherr
André Martinuzzi
Business and the Sustainable Development Goals
Norma Schönherr • André Martinuzzi
Editors
Business and the
Sustainable
Development Goals
Measuring and Managing Corporate Impacts
Editors
Norma Schönherr André Martinuzzi
Institute for Managing Sustainability Institute for Managing Sustainability
Vienna University of Economics and Vienna University of Economics and
Business Business
Vienna, Austria Vienna, Austria
ISBN 978-3-030-16809-4 ISBN 978-3-030-16810-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16810-0
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P
reface
Over the past 15 years, business has emerged as an important player in the
field of sustainable development. Concurrently, however, trust in the pri-
vate sector’s ability to self-regulate and drive positive social change has
been waning. Negative consequences of trade and globalization, including
rising inequality and stagnant wage levels, have increased opposition to
global business, in particular, and globalization, more generally. While
many firms have responded to this by adopting corporate sustainability
practices and implementing sustainability management systems, the impact
of these measures is not reflected in improvements to the state of the
planet. On the contrary, global sustainability challenges like climate
change, biodiversity loss, and pollution continue to mount, and the roll-
back of environmental legislation in some places, such as the United
States, is not a promising sign. If, as many executives today agree, sustain-
ability is a prerequisite for continued prosperity and competitiveness, it
becomes ever more urgent to understand what kind of corporate sustain-
ability really impacts positively on the natural environment, on society and
firms themselves.
In the midst of this ongoing debate surrounding the role of business in
society, there is an emerging consensus that companies can and ought to
contribute to sustainability by enhancing positive impacts (e.g. on liveli-
hoods, health, and education) and reducing negative ones (e.g. resource
consumption, pollution, and human rights violations). This requires both
strategic sensitivity to global sustainability challenges and sound impact
measurement and management at the corporate level.
v
vi PREFACE
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly in September 2015 provide a comprehensive
and universally applicable framework for strategic corporate engagement
with sustainability issues. This constitutes a good entry point for compa-
nies to begin tackling their sustainability impacts in a more systematic
fashion at all levels and to identify new business opportunities while con-
tributing to the solution of the grand sustainability challenges facing the
world today.
However, measuring and managing the contribution of business to the
SDGs poses particular challenges. For firms, it requires a well-founded
understanding of the wider impacts of their core business, community,
and philanthropic engagement, as well as of the materiality of these impacts
in a sustainability context. Assessing impacts has to consider trade-offs and
ambiguities arising from the diversity of sustainability issues as well as the
values and interests of different stakeholder groups. At the same time, the
SDGs are an unprecedented opportunity for stakeholders to engage with
business. For consultants, measuring and managing impacts is a promising
area of work, as many companies lack knowledge and data beyond their
corporate boundaries. And for researchers, impact measurement and man-
agement has emerged as an important new field for research, as well as an
application area of their knowledge and tools.
In this context, this volume serves a dual purpose: On the one hand, it
critically analyzes selected impact measurement and management tools
and speaks to their respective benefits and limitations. On the other hand,
it aims to provide guidance on management decisions that enable high-
quality impact measurement and management to support companies in
demonstrating their contribution to sustainability.
The analyses underlying this book are the result of three years of
research conducted by an international consortium in the EU-funded
research project GLOBAL VALUE—Managing Business Impacts on
Development (www.global-value.eu/toolkit). This highly collaborative
research project involved leading universities, civil society organizations,
and corporations from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The research presented in
this volume is complemented by concrete examples from corporate prac-
tice and interviews with experts from organizations deeply involved in tool
development and measuring the contribution of business to
sustainability.
It is our hope that this volume will be of value to academics, as well as
practitioners and professionals with close links to research (including
PREFACE vii
evaluation professionals, consultants, and tool developers) working in or
across the fields of sustainability management, corporate sustainability,
inclusive business, and sustainable development. More specifically, the
work should be of relevance to readers interested in recent research on the
business contribution to the SDGs, or understanding different method-
ological approaches and practices for measuring corporate sustainability
impacts, as well as to those who want to receive an overview of this
dynamic, evolving field of research.
Vienna, Austria Norma Schönherr
February 2019 André Martinuzzi
a
cknowledgments
Funding for the research underlying this volume was provided by the
European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme in the con-
text of the GLOBAL VALUE project (contract number: 613295). We are
grateful to the European Commission for making this research possible.
We also wish to thank the GLOBAL VALUE project partners for three
years of fruitful and very pleasant collaboration. Their expertise, creativity,
and commitment have been invaluable.
Our gratitude also goes to the contributing authors of this volume,
who have made their original research papers available and have borne
with us throughout an extensive process of review and revision. Moreover,
we wish to acknowledge the tool developers and practitioners, who have
provided their insights in interviews, and our case companies for providing
data and investing time into collaboratively testing existing impact assess-
ment approaches, as well as for engaging with us to develop the best prac-
tice cases presented in this book.
Finally, yet importantly, we are grateful for the constructive feedback of
several anonymous reviewers on the proposal and draft manuscript of this
volume and to the Palgrave Macmillan editorial team for their patience
and support.
Any remaining errors are strictly our own. The European Commission
is not responsible for use that may be made of any material arising from
the GLOBAL VALUE project and this book.
ix
c
ontents
1 Introduction: The Sustainable Development Goals and the
Future of Corporate Sustainability 1
André Martinuzzi and Norma Schönherr
2 The Corporate Toolbox 19
Norma Schönherr, Lucia A. Reisch, Andrea Farsang, Armi
Temmes, Adele Tharani, and André Martinuzzi
3 Scoping What Matters: An Introduction to Impact
Mapping 55
Florian Findler
4 Measuring What Matters: Standardized Versus
Customizable Impact Measurement Tools 75
Adele Tharani
5 Managing What Matters: Integrating Impact Measurement
into Corporate Sustainability Management 95
Armi Temmes
xi
xii CONTENTS
6 Implementing Impact Measurement and Management 113
Norma Schönherr, Lucia A. Reisch, Andrea Farsang, Armi
Temmes, Adele Tharani, and André Martinuzzi
Index 129
