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Finance, Sustainability, and Business Legitimacy

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Handbook of Business Legitimacy

Abstract

The world faces an increasing number of complex and mutually influential challenges that we have never experienced and cannot cope with our experience so far. The new economic age is an era of unparalleled resources and technological progress, but is also defined as the age of mistrust for a great number of people. This has led to increased requirement to new methods, new business models, and new business strategies to respond to this insecurity. Therefore institutions need to manage their risks in the long run in order to survive. Ethical and responsible behaviors, intellectual capacities, and corporate cultures are crucial for sustainable performance in this turbulent period. It is expected that the institutions that are able to establish the system of values can manage effective information sharing and communication with their stakeholders.

Sustainability has become one of the most significant topics within the lexicon of corporate endeavor in the light of these developments. While the concept of sustainability is in many instances indicated as fundamental in corporate activity, its definition is still problematic, and its use is so varied. Therefore the concept of sustainability and its dimensions are defined in the business setting at first in this chapter. Then the theoretical framework is also presented in this chapter to clarify why companies disclose their sustainable performance information. Moreover the financial consequences of sustainability implementations of companies are discussed in this chapter. Sustainability should be considered as not solely a process which must recognize the decision being made in the operational activity but also the distributional decisions which are made. Only then, a company can be considered to be sustainable.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Finance Governance and Sustainability (CFGS), Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Guler Aras

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  1. Guler Aras
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Correspondence to Guler Aras .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Roskilde University , Roskilde, Denmark

    Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

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Aras, G. (2019). Finance, Sustainability, and Business Legitimacy. In: Rendtorff, J. (eds) Handbook of Business Legitimacy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_77-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_77-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68845-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68845-9

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