The Perspective of the Automotive Industry on Sustainability: Case of Kütahya

Abstract

Nowadays, the concept of sustainability, which has become one of the important and common concepts in economic and social fields and especially in the environmental science, is defined in the Brundtland Report (1987) as meeting the present needs, in such a way not to jeopardize the meeting of the needs of future generations (Nuong et al., 2011: 43).Sustainability, which has been considered as one of the professional business activities in recent years, often takes place in the strategies of businesses that are leaders in the world and are trying to achieve this goal. In this respect, sustainability, which has been just included in the agenda of the businesses in our country, constitutes the subject of the study. Based on the automotive industry, which is vital for the national economy, it is aimed to examine the perspective of production businesses operating in Kütahya in this industry on sustainability and to reveal the perception of sustainability in the businesses. The economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability in the literature and the subcomponents of these dimensions are analyzed by one of the multi-criteria decision-making methods, the Analytical Hierarchy Process, based on the sustainability model developed by Salvado et al. (2015).This study is thought to be important in terms of increasing the awareness of sustainability, which has a major impact on global and local competition, as well as being important and primary in meeting the responsibilities of businesses to the society and environment, adopting, applying, and extending the applications in our country. It is hoped that this application study in the automotive industry will also contribute to the activity force and businesses of the country in terms of its contribution to the national economy and its intense relationship with other industries.

Keywords: Sustainability, Indicators of Sustainability, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Automotive Industry