Incorporating Sustainability Into Strategic Management for Maintaining Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The complex and turbulent contemporary business environment requires an understanding that considering sustainability challenges and issues in the strategic decision-making process is essential for building and maintaining a company's competitive advantage. The authors advocate that incorporating sustainability in the strategic planning process and developing sustainability strategies must be part of a company's transformation and reorientation to “a sustainability company.” They explain the interdependences between the company's sustainability orientation, institutional solutions, and instrumental specifics and emphasize the requisite holism of process, institutional, and instrumental dimensions of strategic management for maintaining a company's competitive advantage. They conclude our chapter by presenting a model of interdependence of strategic management dimensions, sustainability, and competitive advantage of a company.