Sustainable strategic management emerged from the coevolution of strategic thinking in today's sustainability challenging business environment. Business ecosystems, designed to create socially and ecologically responsible economic opportunities for their members, have emerged as excellent structures for implementing sustainable strategic management strategies along the whole pyramid of coevolving developed, developing, and undeveloped markets. Both the business ecosystem leaders and niche players in these whole pyramid business ecosystems have critical roles to play in formulating and implementing potentially profitable strategies that help reduce the human footprint and improve the quality of human life. Ecosystem leaders need to be responsible for creating and shepherding their business ecosystems' visions of a sustainable future, and niche players need to be responsible for providing the ecosystem with an innovation trajectory designed to make those visions a reality.

Sustainable strategic management emerged from the coevolution of strategic thinking in today's sustainability challenging business environment. Business ecosystems, designed to create socially and ecologically responsible economic opportunities for their members, have emerged as excellent structures for implementing sustainable strategic management strategies along the whole pyramid of coevolving developed, developing, and undeveloped markets. Both the business ecosystem leaders and niche players in these whole pyramid business ecosystems have critical roles to play in formulating and implementing potentially profitable strategies that help reduce the human footprint and improve the quality of human life. Ecosystem leaders need to be responsible for creating and shepherding their business ecosystems' visions of a sustainable future, and niche players need to be responsible for providing the ecosystem with an innovation trajectory designed to make those visions a reality.

We develop an expanded asset evaluation model dubbed the environmental, social and governance (ESG) model, which includes a sustainability factor that accounts for the value of ecological and natural capital. We incorporate a sustainability factor into the Fama-French [2015. “A Five-Factor Asset Pricing Model.” Journal of Financial Economics 116 (1): 1–22] five-factor model plus the momentum factor. Further, we expand previous models by basing ours on microeconomic principles of value maximization and the macroeconomic principles of ecological economics. We estimate the sustainability factor premium and its factor loadings and find that following sustainable strategic management practices reduced the cost of equity by 1.6% to 2.9% per year worldwide. This implies that in 2018, sustainable strategic management practices increased world GDP by $1.3 to $2.3 trillion. Our results support previous research that there is a negative relationship between sustainability performance and the cost of capital.

Background: Sustainability in business has become an essential part for firms to consider, as stakeholder’s concerns are increasing, and the use of ESG scores has increased in the last years. Prior research mostly examines the European and US market and the relationship between ESG score and financial performance. Hence, a gap regarding ESG scores effect on stock performance, and possibilities for sustainable strategic management, was found on the Indian market as an emerging economy.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between ESG, stock performance, and sustainability reporting of Indian companies. Thus, enable a deeper understanding of the impact of sustainable development on firms.  Method: This research has followed positivism and social constructionism, with a deductive approach, and both a quantitative and qualitative method. Purposive sampling is used, by collecting the stock prices, volatility and ESG scores for firms from the index Nifty 50. Two portfolios were conducted from the samplings, representing the firms with the highest and the lowest ESG scores, along with an analysation of the individual companies. The data were analysed in STATA by an OLS regression analysis and Pearson correlation test, to test the hypotheses. Observations of the firm’s sustainability reports were analysed to gather their sustainable actions.  Conclusion: The results indicated that ESG have a positive effect on stock prices, on the Indian market. Thus, firms would benefit from achieving a higher ESG-score. However, due to varying results regarding volatility, results could not be determined whether firms achieve any improved stability from a higher ESG score. The findings also show that there are differences between high and low ESG scored firms regarding SDGs, policy frameworks, anti-corruption and the ESG approach. Which indicate opportunities for Indian firms to develop their sustainable actions, to increase value creation for stakeholders.

We develop an expanded asset evaluation model dubbed the environmental, social and governance (ESG) model, which includes a sustainability factor that accounts for the value of ecological and natural capital. We incorporate a sustainability factor into the Fama-French [2015. “A Five-Factor Asset Pricing Model.” Journal of Financial Economics 116 (1): 1–22] five-factor model plus the momentum factor. Further, we expand previous models by basing ours on microeconomic principles of value maximization and the macroeconomic principles of ecological economics. We estimate the sustainability factor premium and its factor loadings and find that following sustainable strategic management practices reduced the cost of equity by 1.6% to 2.9% per year worldwide. This implies that in 2018, sustainable strategic management practices increased world GDP by $1.3 to $2.3 trillion. Our results support previous research that there is a negative relationship between sustainability performance and the cost of capital.

Esta dissertação tem o propósito de buscar um maior entendimento dos conceitos acerca do desenvolvimento sustentável aplicado à gestão empresarial. Trata-se de um tema bastante contemporâneo, emergente e que vem sendo discutido por diferentes grupos, tais como acadêmicos, jornalistas, biólogos, artistas, sociólogos, gestores, entre outros. Elaborou-se uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema cuja literatura é vasta e multidisciplinar; a sustentabilidade aplicada à gestão empresarial ainda é um conceito em construção. O Método SIGMA foi apresentado como referencial teórico de um método de gestão estratégica socioambiental. A revisão da literatura orientou a realização de uma pesquisa qualitativa com os objetivos de (i) explorar as práticas de gestão estratégica de uma empresa brasileira do setor de papel e celulose e observar se tais práticas incorporam as dimensões sociais e ambientais às econômico-financeiras (triple bottom line) e (ii) observar se existe aderência das práticas observadas na empresa àquelas propostas pelo método conceitual SIGMA. Como conclusão, observou-se que existe aderência (mais no conteúdo que na forma) das práticas de gestão da empresa X às propostas pelo Método SIGMA; porém, a presença das dimensões sociais e ambientais nas práticas de gestão estratégica parece ser mais tímida que a dimensão econômico-financeira. / A deeper understanding of the concept of sustainable development applied to strategic corporate management is the main purpose of this master thesis. Such theme is being discussed within many different groups such as academics, journalists, artists, corporate managers among others. A bibliography review on the subject was performed; sustainability applied to strategic corporate management is still a concept being built. The SIGMA Guidelines were introduced as the conceptual framework for managing strategic corporate sustainability. A qualitative research was conducted based on the bibliography review aiming at (i) exploring the strategic management framework of a Brazilian company in the pulp and paper industry and understanding if such framework considers social and environmental dimensions in addition to the financial/economic dimension (triple bottom line) and (ii) understanding if the company’s management framework keeps association to the conceptual framework proposed by the SIGMA Guidelines. As a conclusion, there is a certain degree of association between the management framework within the company and the one proposed by the SIGMA Guidelines; however, the social and environmental dimensions seem to be less present in the company´s strategic management framework (in strategic terms) than the financial/economic dimension.

Esta dissertação tem o propósito de buscar um maior entendimento dos conceitos acerca do desenvolvimento sustentável aplicado à gestão empresarial. Trata-se de um tema bastante contemporâneo, emergente e que vem sendo discutido por diferentes grupos, tais como acadêmicos, jornalistas, biólogos, artistas, sociólogos, gestores, entre outros. Elaborou-se uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema cuja literatura é vasta e multidisciplinar; a sustentabilidade aplicada à gestão empresarial ainda é um conceito em construção. O Método SIGMA foi apresentado como referencial teórico de um método de gestão estratégica socioambiental. A revisão da literatura orientou a realização de uma pesquisa qualitativa com os objetivos de (i) explorar as práticas de gestão estratégica de uma empresa brasileira do setor de papel e celulose e observar se tais práticas incorporam as dimensões sociais e ambientais às econômico-financeiras (triple bottom line) e (ii) observar se existe aderência das práticas observadas na empresa àquelas propostas pelo método conceitual SIGMA. Como conclusão, observou-se que existe aderência (mais no conteúdo que na forma) das práticas de gestão da empresa X às propostas pelo Método SIGMA; porém, a presença das dimensões sociais e ambientais nas práticas de gestão estratégica parece ser mais tímida que a dimensão econômico-financeira. / A deeper understanding of the concept of sustainable development applied to strategic corporate management is the main purpose of this master thesis. Such theme is being discussed within many different groups such as academics, journalists, artists, corporate managers among others. A bibliography review on the subject was performed; sustainability applied to strategic corporate management is still a concept being built. The SIGMA Guidelines were introduced as the conceptual framework for managing strategic corporate sustainability. A qualitative research was conducted based on the bibliography review aiming at (i) exploring the strategic management framework of a Brazilian company in the pulp and paper industry and understanding if such framework considers social and environmental dimensions in addition to the financial/economic dimension (triple bottom line) and (ii) understanding if the company’s management framework keeps association to the conceptual framework proposed by the SIGMA Guidelines. As a conclusion, there is a certain degree of association between the management framework within the company and the one proposed by the SIGMA Guidelines; however, the social and environmental dimensions seem to be less present in the company´s strategic management framework (in strategic terms) than the financial/economic dimension.