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A stochastic approach for sustainability analysis under the green economics paradigm

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Abstract

Sustainability is an increasingly important factor in today’s globally competitive environment. How sustainability features are prioritized in terms of relevance and significance is a function of many factors, including variations in types of business, operational conditions, history and other characteristics particular to a company. The purpose of this paper is to propose a stochastic model that explicitly addresses the potential barriers and enablers to sustainability in order to measure and assess the sustainability level of a company. Given that the potential barriers and enablers to sustainability are context dependent, the stochastic model developed in this paper assumes that a variable characterization of sustainability functions can describe a realistic analytical model for a company’s sustainability behavior. By adopting the strong sustainability perspective, a case scenario is used to demonstrate the application of the proposed model in a major Canadian electric utility. By providing relatively simple and informative measurement, the proposed sustainability model can be used as a practical and effective tool to assess the sustainability level of any company under consideration and to evaluate sustainability fluctuation of the company over time.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Payman Ahi & Cory Searcy

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  1. Payman Ahi
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Correspondence to Payman Ahi.

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Ahi, P., Searcy, C. A stochastic approach for sustainability analysis under the green economics paradigm. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 28, 1743–1753 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-013-0836-5

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