University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

the GBOs sustainability practices and programs, and the (entire) business
chain, including suppliers, internal activities, and customers. There is no
equivalent component in ISO14001.
7. A continuous improvement feedback loop based on Deming’s PDCA
principle, with performance measurement and assurance processes, is
provided by module seven. This provides a sustainability (rather than
environmental) system functionality similar to ISO14001 part 4.5 and 4.6.
These seven components are further divided into seventy-three attributes (Table 1).
To provide a tool for maturity testing (assessing the degree of implementation of the
system in an organization), three levels of maturity have been assigned to each of
these 73 attributes, and a scoring system has been applied to these maturity tests
(with a maximum score of 219 points).
We recognize that there are a number of important limitations with this type of
scoring system:
� All seventy-three attributes have been assigned the same value, although they
may not have equal importance in the sustainability management process. In
fact importance may vary across business sectors or geographically
� The more (of the 73) attributes a system component has, the more value is
assigned to it in the overall scoring
� Improvement (growth) in achievement is scored in a disproportionate manner,
as Level 2 is 200% of Level 1, but Level 3 is (only) 150% of Level 2
� The use of three levels of maturity is, to some extent, arbitrary and systems
with five, or more levels are used
These limitations are symptomatic of all maturity and benchmarking systems, and at
present we have chosen not to introduce any weighting or normalizing features. In
fact these are problems with any such system, not only with this one. Our system
reflects established practices, is useful for tracking progress with time, and is simple
to use.
Conclusions
Having reviewed the definitions of a GBO and then discussed the sustainability
management requirements that are specific to GBOs, we have presented a new
management system that has been developed to address these requirements. We
argue that this system is much more suited to application in GBOs than existing
environmental management systems.
In particular, we believe this system is more suitable for implementation in GBOs
than ISO14011, which was designed to be applicable in all organizations, but is not
45