Sustainability measurement

Sustainability management describes the integration of concepts and tools to improve the social, environmental and economic aspects in the organization management.

Sustainability management in business

Companies are increasingly judged and measure themselves by how they pursue the goals of sustainable development. Orientation towards sustainable development and corporate social responsibility are to become strategically important tasks of contemporary corporate policy. It is also necessary to run the company so that it has time to stock: Neither his financial capital and its investment capital nor its human and social capital or natural capital may therefore consume without replacement. Consequently, there is both a long-term successful business as well as, consequently, to a positive contribution of the company to sustainable development of society and the societal relations to nature.

It is an object of management, to anchor sustainability according to the company and systematically put into internal structures and processes. These advanced strategic management tools are needed, such as the introduction of a balanced scorecard or a special, human resources management and environmental management comprehensive sustainability control. This is seen as a challenging cross-cutting issue. The sustainability management will usually include the aspects of internal and external sustainability communications ( eg using sustainability reports ).

Concepts and systems of sustainability management

For the implementation of the objectives in the context of sustainability management, there are different concepts and systems that are responsive to the different approaches with different modes of action. Among the concepts and systems include:

• Corporate incentive systems
• Working time models
• Integration of sustainability into the Balanced Scorecard, eg the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard
• Operating Environment Information Systems
• Corporate Citizenship
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Ecodesign
• Environmental management systems
• Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Urban Sustainability Management

Here, sustainability management is a systematic, regularly repeated and common development planning, which is to host a community the goal of sustainability.

• Systematically: it will be related to each gone three steps, a) the formulation of philosophical and measurable objectives, b ) the development and implementation of measures targeted toward this, c ) verification of the success of these measures with an inventory. The purpose of these steps is to align one's actions as well as possible to the objectives to reach them more easily.

• Regularly repeated: these operations are performed at regular intervals, for example every 3 years, repeatedly. This is intended to better assess their own situation and to improve the effectiveness of one's actions constantly by objectives, its measurability and the measures needed to be " adjusted ".

• Common: the decisions are made on a broad basis, to the steps of all actors involved, can contribute to the success ( or failure) of activities ( administrative, policy, companies, institutions, organizations and associations, private households). The aim is a) greater effectiveness, as more actors follow the objectives, because they have mitformuliert this because there are so become common goals; b ) a more effective, because the actors coordinate their activities better, to avoid duplication of work, etc..