Sustainability Management within Selected Large-scale Enterprises in Germany

Sustainability is a very important factor in long-term entrepreneurial success. Company-wide sustainability management is mandatory and requires software support if it is to be conducted efficiently. Thus, the aim of this paper is to point out the challenges and difficulties facing large-scale enterprises in Germany while implementing and maintaining company-wide sustainability management. We conducted a multiple-case study of seven selected German companies. The results show that the selection and deployment of sustainability instruments differ from enterprise to enterprise. However, all of the enterprises studied exhibited substantial uncertainty about the extent of possible future governmental regulation that would make an adaptation of existing systems necessary causing high costs and requiring high resource deployment. This is why software-support of sustainability instruments is often done with Excelbased solutions or other home-grown programs.