Cassandra Carswell; Stuart Filshie; Yvette Osinga; Solveig Zophoniasdottir , pp. 79. ING/School of Engineering, 2012.
The newly emerging Fourth Sector combines a strong social or environmental mission with business practices, and could potentially play a catalysing role in moving society towards sustainability. This thesis explores the extent that Danish social businesses and enterprises are using a strategic sustainable development approach and discusses how such an approach could potentially strengthen their core business. The analytical framework we used is the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, complemented with sector specific elements. To gather our data we conducted twelve semi-structured interviews with Danish social enterprises and businesses, as well as expert interviews. Main findings include that few had both social and environmental goals, that they strategise informally, and few measure their impact. Recommendations to strengthen their core business include incorporating sustainability in their definition of success, making their decision-making framework explicit, and measure and communicate impacts.
Stuart Filshie, +46 760-640 650