A model for integrated assessment of sustainable development

The focus of the paper is on consideration of how to use indicators to monitor sustainable development in a relevant and useful manner. Integrated information on sustainable development of a company is very essential for decision-making since it is very difficult to evaluate the performance of the company on the ground of too many indicators. The objective of the work was to design a model for obtaining a composite sustainable development index (I-CSD) in order to track integrated information on economic, environmental, and social performance of the company with time. Normalized indicators were associated into three sustainability sub-indices and finally composed into an overall indicator of a company performance. This was applied by determining the impact of individual indicator to the overall sustainability of a company using the concept of analytic hierarchy process. The demonstration of the model used data for a case study company, Henkel, and a set of sustainable development indicators that were classified using the currently most widely accepted approach of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Case study was used to measure I-CSD and sustainability sub-indices of the company over the time interval of 6 years. Interpretation of results is given and the utility of I-CSD with its relevance for decision-making is pointed out. Using a case study, the paper demonstrates that the model can be applied to deliver composite indicators of sustainability performance of companies. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.