Sustainable Corporate Development: A Resource-Oriented Approach

Sustainable corporate development can be understood as a strategy that respects not only economic goals but also environmental and social aspects, weigh against each other and thus, ensures the long-term business success. The number of enterprises that are oriented towards corporate sustainability has increased in recent years, but the implementation still encounters a variety of limits. The goal of this chapter is the development of an integrated approach to foster sustainable development on the corporate level. In this context, not only tangible resources (e.g. raw material, energy or machines) but in particular intangible resources (e.g. expertise and professional competence of the employees, corporate culture or relations with stakeholders) are considered key success factors for a sustainable corporate development. For its application, the integrated approach provides a set of instruments and procedures, which can be used for the purpose of analysis, planning, controlling and reporting of sustainable corporate development.