Understanding contemporary models for organisational sustainability: critical review

Abstract

This paper aims to critically review 13 contemporary models and initiatives for sustainable development (SD). Sustainability is the action oriented variant of sustainable development. However, in the literature, there are mixed results regarding identification of the main dimensions of sustainability. Few efforts were done to compare between these models and show the similarities and dissimilarities aspects. Thus, different scholars have identified different models for measuring SD. As revealed through the analysis it is found that organisations are focusing on diversified aspects rather than identical or uniform strategies when dealing with sustainability issues. The main contributions of this paper are twofold: 1) it depicted 13 different contemporary models for SD; 2) it introduced the different dimensions for SD compared with those from different scholars.