A stairway to the stars : monitoring sustainability performance in SMBs

This article proposes a framework that can be used, or modified for use, as a mechanism to measure, evaluate and monitor progress in business sustainability. It draws upon previous change management models, such as ‘Management by Objectives’ (Lynch, 1977; Felix and Riggs, 1983) and ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (Kaplan and Norton, 1995), proposing a conceptual framework for the monitoring of business sustainability. The framework allows sustainability improvement to be monitored by means of a composite sustainability index derived from specific metrics appropriate to a range of prioritised strategic objectives. It then discusses the necessity for such a mechanism to be sufficiently robust in respect of seven contextual issues. It recommends that a firm’s choice of sustainability performance measures and their relative priorities should be aligned with global, societal, external, industry, organisational, leadership and individual-personal contexts.