Identifying Corporate Sustainable Development as a part of the Organizational Performance. A case study within the Swedish FPP Industry

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to test a combination of tools and theory to identify corporate sustainable development as part of organizational performance. Nowadays, in global business, the concept and application of sustainable development has become an important factor in the daily operations and strategies for the companies. The policies and practices of the companies are more aware of environmental, social and financial aspects. The publication of sustainability and environmental reports is becoming more popular within business. The media and stakeholders as customers, investors or government offices are more interested in the company’s position towards social and environmental issues. Therefore, the above purpose could be a potential asset for businesses and researchers to relate corporate sustainable development with organizational performance. We will not try to generalize, but test the usability of the theory combined in one model, which can be an asset to test corporate sustainability within a company’s organizational performance. This research will have a deductive approach, and could possibly encourage inductive research for further study. The theoretical framework consists of three sections including two theories, which uniquely identify corporate sustainable development (CSD) and organizational performance (OP). Finally, a combination of these two theories is shown as a practical model that we will try to test in a case. Our thesis will have a qualitative approach. Interviews are the main data collection tool as secondary data (company documents etc.). Secondary data is used as a supporting collection method. The personal interviews, conducted through video conferencing, have been recorded and transcribed for usage in the empirical method. The interview guide can be found in the appendix. The outcome of this research shows that many aspects are entangled within the phenomenon known as “corporate sustainable development”. We have found that economic prosperity has a strong presence (in both cases) within the environmental performance, just as social equity showed within learning and development performance, and social equity has a strong link with social performance. Looking at the case companies, and determining the focus on every dimension, we therefore found measurable relations between OP variables and CSD dimensions. We can also conclude that, when performing the second case analysis (Sveaskog), the results of the measures found were not always similar which asks for more case studies. An overall conclusion on the usability of the measurement tool leans towards positive, for practical usage. However, before using this combination of tools, more research is necessary, especially in the area of multiple case studies. Due to time restrictions, we could compare two case companies, whilst more cases could enhance the general application and usability of these tools.