Sustainable performance in business organisations and institutions is a topical issue for top management and operational managers. The excellent sustainable performance will be challenging to achieve in a silo business culture. Therefore, many business leaders are standing now in front of the meaningful transformation that requires creating a clear roadmap, indicating how to build a strategy that embeds ‘sustainability’ into an organisation’s performance measurement systems, how to operationalise, track and report on sustainability performance and finally how to manage sustainability performance in the longer-term.
There is no doubt that the interest in the sustainable performance of business organisations will be growing. It is enough to note that the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) includes the mandate to report sustainability information under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). It is estimated that the provisions will apply to over 50,000 large and listed companies (except listed micro-companies) based in the EU and third-country companies based outside the EU with undertakings within the EU (subsidiaries or branches). This is a huge impact that, together with the European Green Deal and its policy initiatives’ package, will change the mindset of many business organisations and public institutions. Nevertheless, the green transition will bring many challenges for nations, regions, and organisations. Lack of capacity to develop the required policies, lack of knowledge, infrastructure, technologies, and insufficient incentives to boost green and social innovations are only a few burning issues. Also, cultural barriers may cause a radical shift towards sustainable development difficult. There will also be questions about the cost-effectiveness of new solutions and their longevity and whether they are socially balanced and fair.