Translating the sustainability vision and the differentiation of sustainability indicators for different management levels. A case study in the services sector in the Netherlands, at royal KPN n.v.

Abstract

There are multiple management tools available for corporations that want to become more sustainable. From separate management control systems for social or environmental goals to integrated or sustainability management systems. These management tools rely to a large extent on indicators. Current literature however, usually takes these indicators as a given, without providing guidelines for how these indicators should be developed. The little information available for indicator development, provides insight in how to develop one set of indicators as if the organization consists of only one management level. In reality however, multiple management levels exist that all have their own requirements of indicators. This research explored how an organization can develop a set of indicators that is differentiated to provide guidance at all management levels, whilst at the same time still contributing to the corporate vision. Different bodies of literature where combined in order to come up with success criteria that appear to be responsible for the successful differentiation of a set of indicators. A framework was developed that was largely based on the balanced scorecard as a starting point. The success criteria were first tested on well-established conventional indicators at royal KPN N.V. This test made sure that the success criteria could be valid by first testing their fulfilment on indicator that were known to be differentiated well. Thereafter, the framework was tested on sustainability indicators to see whether the same success criteria or their absence could also be responsible for successful differentiation of sustainability indicators. The balanced scorecard appeared to be a good starting point as a framework for success criteria for the differentiation of (sustainability) indicators. Most success criteria were confirmed to be relevant by illuminating the mechanisms that led to successful differentiation. The case study exposed some minor modifications that had to be made to the success criteria to make them meaningful for successful differentiation. The in-depth understanding of the corporation required for this study, led to a limited amount of cases being studied. Therefore, the success criteria proposed in this research are a good starting point for further research.