Corporate sustainability assessment methodology
Author(s)
Pinchuk, Natallia
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Other Contributors
Leaders for Global Operations Program.
Advisor
Sarah Slaughter and Daniel Whitney.
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Sustainability is a vague concept specifically in the context of a corporate world. There are numerous definitions for corporate sustainability and just as many ways of evaluating it. This work attempts to define, structure and assess corporate sustainability in a standardized robust manner through development of a comprehensive framework. The framework is developed based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines to serve as a common measure system allowing for meaningful assessment of current state and comparison between companies in a variety of industries. Based on this framework and earlier developed Sustainability Assessment by Fuzzy Evaluation (SAFE) model a quantitative method is developed in MATLAB code. The new method is demonstrated on five companies within software industry through evaluation of publicly available data. The outcome of the evaluation is a relative ranking of companies with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects as well as intermediate components of each. Additionally high impact components, which have the potential to improve the ranking outcome the most, are identified for one of the companies as an example of practical application of such assessment. Evaluation of these components could serve as a base for recommendations development of further management action on improving of company's sustainability.
Description
Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2011. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-102).
Date issued
2011Department
Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sloan School of ManagementPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Sloan School of Management., Mechanical Engineering., Leaders for Global Operations Program.