In recent years, ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘corporate responsibility’ and ‘sustainable enterprise’ have become part of the common parlance of business and academia. However, there remains some confusion and divergence of opinion about the exact meaning of these terms.This study aims to shed light on the ‘sustainable enterprise’ concept, addressing questions such as what a sustainable enterprise is, what its main characteristics are, and how it differs from the traditional enterprise model. It explores these issues with reference to the eighteen market sector leaders of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes (DJSI).

As part of its analysis, ‘The Sustainable Enterprise’ describes the underlying values a firm must embed in order to advance towards sustainability. The core value of the sustainable enterprise is an awareness of the system it is part of and a sense of belonging to it. Instead of being a net predator of the physical and social environment, the sustainable enterprise obtains resources from the system with the purpose of contributing to the net creation of wealth. Applying this yardstick to the leading companies on the DJSI, this study explores how they are embedding sustainability in their governance, strategy formulation and other management systems. And how their openness to the social and physical environment has helped them develop an honest, fluid dialogue with stakeholder groups.

The results and best practices described in this book will assist companies aware of the importance of sustainability and keen to incorporate sustainable development as a core value driver, while its contribution to the conceptualization of the sustainable enterprise should usefully inform future research in the field.