Clarifying the Meaning of Sustainable Business: Introducing a Typology From Business-as-Usual to True Business Sustainability
Abstract
While sustainability management is becoming more widespread among major companies, the impact of their activities does not reflect in studies monitoring the state of the planet. What results from this is a “big disconnect.” With this article, we address two main questions: “How can business make an effective contribution to addressing the sustainability challenges we are facing?” and “When is business truly sustainable?” In a time when more and more corporations claim to manage sustainably, we need to distinguish between those companies that contribute effectively to sustainability and those that do not. We provide an answer by clarifying the meaning of business sustainability. We review established approaches and develop a typology of business sustainability with a focus on effective contributions for sustainable development. This typology ranges from Business Sustainability 1.0 (Refined Shareholder Value Management) to Business Sustainability 2.0 (Managing for the Triple Bottom Line) and to Business Sustainability 3.0 (True Sustainability).
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The fourth dimension considers Sustainable HRM outputs as the values or resources created by HRM, such as the achievement of ecological, social, and human values.
“Finally, our fourth dimension considers Sustainable HRM outputs as defined in in an analogy by Dyllick and Muff (2016) as the values or resources created by HRM, such as the achievement of ecological, social, and human values.”
From Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM? (2020) · cites this paper as Dyllick & Muff, 2016
There is increasing evidence that common good approaches could prove more effective in bridging the current gap between corporate sustainability business practices and their impact.
“There is increasing evidence that common good approaches could prove more effective in bridging the current gap between corporate sustainability business practices and their impact (see Dyllick & Muff, 2016).”
From Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM? (2020) · cites this paper as Dyllick & Muff, 2016
The paper identified four dimensions along which Sustainable HRM approaches vary: organizational perspective, inputs, processes, and outputs.
“Secondly, by applying Dyllick and Muff's (2016) typology to HRM and by developing it further, we identified four dimensions along which Sustainable HRM approaches vary, differentiating the organizational perspective taken, the inputs of each type of Sustainable HRM, the creation of Sustainable HRM processes, and finally, Sustainable HRM outputs.”
From Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM? (2020) · cites this paper as Dyllick and Muff's (2016)
Socially Responsible HRM, Green HRM, and Triple Bottom Line HRM may not be as effective as needed to close the gap between sustainability challenges and HRM practices.
“Although we appreciate the value of research on Socially Responsible HRM, Green HRM, and Triple Bottom line HRM, we agree with Dyllick and Muff (2016) that these approaches may not be as effective as what apparently is needed to close the gap between increasingly greater sustainability challenges and HRM practices.”
From Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM? (2020) · cites this paper as Dyllick and Muff (2016)
Cites
The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
Friedman, M. (2007) · Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance · doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_14 · Cited by 11,529 · see citing works
Beyond the Business Case for Corporate Sustainability
Dyllick, T., & Hockerts, K. (2002) · Business Strategy and the Environment · doi:10.1002/bse.323 · Cited by 4,029 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM?
Aust, I., Matthews, B., & Muller-Camen, M. (2020) · Human Resource Management Review · doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100705 · Cited by 531 · see citing works
“We further developed Dyllick and Muff’s (2016) suggestion that organizations need to focus more on SDGs instead of narrow CS targets. We have also shown that a new understanding of the purpose of HRM is needed to achieve effective design and implementation of Sustainable HRM systems and contribute to solving today’s g…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialCooke, F. L. (2025) · Human Resource Management · doi:10.1002/hrm.22318 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
McCartney, S., Minbaeva, D., Crean, S., & Fahy, A. (2026) · Human Resource Management Review · doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2026.101147
- Authors
- Dyllick, T., & Muff, K.
- Affiliations
- University of St.Gallen (CH)
- Business School Lausanne (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Muff, Katrin
- Venue
- Organization & Environment
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-03-23
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 156-174
- ISSN
- 1086-0266 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7417
- OpenAlex
- W2148649744
- Cited by
- 975
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 137 · 2025: 147 · 2024: 123 · 2023: 105 · 2022: 105 · 2021: 102 · 2020: 89 · 2019: 69 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 36 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 68.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Organization & Environment (publishedVersion)
- Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Sustainability and Innovation in Business
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
- Keywords
- corporate sustainability, sustainability management, triple bottom line, shareholder value management, sustainable development, corporate environmental impact, corporate social responsibility
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
