The Relationship between Sustainability Management, Social Sustainability Performance, Sustainability Reputation and Financial Performance of US Firms: An Empirical Examination

摘要

Described as the holy grail of social responsibility (Jorgensen and Knudsen, 2005) the relationship between social performance and financial performance represents one of the most questioned areas of sustainable business practices (Angelidis et al., 2008, Schrettle et al., 2014).The proposed research uses a yet uncovered sample of Fortune 500 exemplary firms recognized as participants in the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership; Newsweek Green rankings; The Corporate Knights Global 100; and the 100 Best Corporate Citizens list and upon analysis, we found that the social sustainability performance neither significantly affects reputation nor firm financial performance, and questions whether financial performance is too myopic of a construct for firm performance for future research involving social sustainability practices.