A system of indicators for assessing companies’ sustainable development in globalized world

Abstract

The article presents a literature overview of scientific and analytical insights into business sustainability assessment highlighted by both researchers and well-known international organizations. The key idea is to investigate different approaches to forming indicators for sustainability assessment. Therefore, the purpose of this article is the following: to research approaches to the formation and composition of indicators for assessing the enterprise’s sustainable development, given in international standards, ratings, indices, and scientific publications devoted to the study of a given issue; to develop indicators system for business sustainability analysis that meets the needs of Ukrainian enterprises; to argue the necessity to introduce into the scientific discourse the term “indicator for organizations sustainable development assessment” and specific criteria that fully reflects the main peculiarities of the enterprise’s sustainable development concept. Today, there are many approaches to outlining indicators for assessing harmonious development, given in a number of international standards, generally accepted indices and ratings, research by domestic and foreign experts. At the same time, the activities of economic entities are affected by unpredictable environmental challenges, requests from a wide range of stakeholders, which, in turn, complicates the process of tracking and maintaining the harmonious development of the organization as a whole. The solution of the outlined problems is possible under the condition of application of relevant, crosscutting and systematic analysis of sustainable development, which will take into account both the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon, the existing conditions of enterprises and the level of implemented initiatives for such a development. The latter is ensured by the use of an adequate and representative system of indicators, which reflects both the peculiarities of the business sustainability and can be applied to various needs of the enterprise — both those that are only at the initial stage of adaptation of harmonious development ideas and those that implement outlined initiatives on a regular basis. As the result, it was suggested to form an indicators system that includes a set of measures, constructed within five sustainability spheres (economy, social, environment, management, and culture) under three criteria — “effectiveness”, “development”, “stakeholder cooperation”. The final list of developed indexes is presented. The main advantages of the developed system of indicators are: it allows the organization to collect and systematize comprehensive information about the aspects of the sustainable development (which reflect the main sustainability elements at the enterprise level, assess the existing situation with such development and the potential of the organization for the systematic its implementation), which can become the basis for benchmarking, in order to improve its existing development strategy as a whole; it contains quantitative and qualitative indicators, taking into account both the specifics of the object of research and the ways of collecting such information; it allows to analyze the current results of sustainability ideas implementation (indicators of criterion “effectiveness”) and to identify and monitor qualitative changes that have occurred in the organization, in the direction of supporting measures for such a development (criterion “development”).