Evaluating Sustainability: a Need for Standards

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the most used words in relation to business activity and reporting atpresent, but its meaning is vague. We argue that its use is based upon the concepts of stewardshipand of the firm as going concerned, coupled with the traditional view of the transformationalprocess of a business. We further argue that this is problematic in the present global environmentwhen stewardship of resources is becoming paramount. We therefore argue that sustainabilityis actually based upon efficiency in the transformational process and equity in thedistribution of effects. We therefore argue for the need for standards in analysing and measuringsustainability and outline a more complete model which recognises distributional implications,and is developed into a model of operationalisability.   Copyright © www.iiste.org