Measuring and Controlling Sustainability: Spanning Theory and Practice

Efforts to establish the measurement and control of sustainability have produced notable tools, but those instruments lack applicability in practice. Increasing the level of standardization of such tools also seems difficult to achieve, because the contexts surrounding the focal organizations differ considerably. Therefore, what we need is a systematic, interdisciplinary assessment of how to measure and control sustainability, so that we can establish an essential definition and up-to-date picture of the field.

Measuring and Controlling Sustainability attempts to provide such an assessment in 17 chapters, organized into four main topic sections: (a) organizations and social value creation: concepts, responsibilities, and barriers; (b) accounting, measurement, performance, and diffusion of social value; (c) practical and managerial insights from real-life cases; and (d) choices, incentives, guidance, and ethics.

This research anthology provides a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge theories and research that will further the development and advancement of measuring and controlling sustainable efforts in theory and managerial practice.

After graduating in engineering, Dr. Adam Lindgreen completed an MSc in food science and technology at the Technical University of Denmark. He went on to studying chemistry and physics after which he finished an MBA at the University of Leicester. Professor Lindgreen received his Ph.D. in marketing from Cranfield University. Since 2011, he has been professor of marketing at the University of Cardiff’s Business School. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bernhard Hirsch has been Professor of Organizational Controls at the Bundeswehr University, Munich since 2006. Professor Hirsch is a Lecturer at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg and Handelshochschule Leipzig. Christine Vallaster works as a senior lecturer for marketing at the University of Liechtenstein. Over the past years, her research in the fields of Corporate Brand Management, Strategy development and CSR was funded by the Liechtenstein research community (FFF), the Marketing Science Institute (MSI, USA), the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation as well as by the German Research Community (DFG). Christine Vallaster’s competence is particularly the qualitative research approach. Shumaila Yousofzai is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Cardiff. Her research can be viewed in relation to three key themes: Technology Adoption; Entrepreneurship, and Transformative Consumer Behaviour. Dr Beatriz Palacios-Florencio is an assistant professor of marketing at University Pablo de Olavide at Seville. Her Ph.D thesis examined the effect of the CSR perception on trust and loyalty of tourists in the hotel sector. She has been a visiting scholar with UNIME, Brasil and Cardiff Business School, Wales. She has worked in the private sector related with the marketing and she is specialized in two areas of complementary research related to teaching and marketing services. She has published in Management Decision, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, Internet Research, and she is author and co-author of several scholarly books. She is responsible for a line of research in Brazil on corporate responsibility and sustainable tourism development.