Explain challenges in Measuring Corporate Sustainability

Hello,I have a discussion post which I have submitted to my Dr.which is followed by the next question..

Could you please provide me with an answer(one paragraph) with the reference for it:

In your discussion, you talk about the challenges of measuring organizational culture. This culture will influence what to include in an internal sustainability report, but managers should, at a minimum, demonstrate accountability, report on targets, and make recommendations. When internally reporting on sustainability targets, why is it critical to appropriately explain the context of reported impacts?

Thanks, Dr. Ruth

The solution to this challenge is to add or create sustainable goals and objectives for the senior employees

My discussion post was:

Challenges in Measuring Corporate Sustainability

Corporate sustainability, also referred to as the corporate social responsibility is an way in which a given business follows by behaving in a way that is more responsive toward cultural, social, environmental and economic issues in order to have a positive impact in their business (Montiel, Ivan, & Javier).

Getting accurate data and important indicators that lead to improvement in performance of a company in a way that business objectives are taken in considerations and also stakeholders is top struggle for companies across industries. Measuring performance impact of corporate sustainability has to include several factors based on the environmental, economic and social issues, factors that make this process difficult for the companies (Eccles et al).

Measuring the impact that culture has on a business is a challenge because it is intangible and how can you define it or measure especially when people in the company are not on board. For example to measure the outcome of a business culture of rewarding best-performing employee, educating employees or business trips have on the organizational performance. With social factors, it is difficult to measure outcome that a company get by implementing a program that seek to help the community around them, like donating their products, giving them offers or producing products that are environmental friendly. Outputs are easily quantifiable and not hard to measure, that not the case with outcomes which are not as easily quantifiable as the outputs. Giving a connection between output and outcome and to at the same time describing this connection quantitatively is a challenge that social business experience. This kind of operation is complex and can be costly (Epstein et al.)

References:

Eccles, Robert G., Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim. “The impact of corporate sustainability on organizational processes and performance.” Management Science 60.11(2014): 2835-2857.

Epstein, Marc J., and Adriana Rejc Buhovac. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts.Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014.

Montiel, Ivan, and Javier Delgado-Ceballos. “Defining and measuring corporate sustainability: Are we there yet?.” Organization & Environment 27.2 (2014): 113-139.