Designing a general set of sustainability indicators at the corporate level

There is a widespread confusion in practice as to which indicators to choose from the vast universe of sustainability indicators that not only transparently reflect performance but also represent the most widely used sustainability guidelines. This study attempts to address one specific question. What are the most common indicators of sustainability at the corporate level? To do so, it examines corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability normative frameworks, management systems, guidelines, and rating systems using a comprehensive four-pronged approach to find the most common indicators for the assessment of environmental, social and governance aspects of business performance. The study attempts to transcend the current literature on sustainability indicators by providing a general set of the most common indicators that are clustered into a hierarchical normative framework. Moreover, this general set of most common indicators provides a guidance for the implementation of indicator systems in companies and enables them to assess their sustainability performance, which in turn will help the business sustainable development agenda. The results of the study showed that environmental indicators account for almost half of the extracted most common indicators. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the most common indicators of sustainability at the corporate level and their utility to companies and stakeholders. This work extends, updates and complements previous efforts to find the most common indicators of sustainability. It also provides the building blocks for future studies that could explore the usefulness of these indicators to companies and stakeholders in various contexts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.