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Managing Sustainability Throughout Supporting Activities
Managing Sustainability Throughout Supporting Activities
1. Introduction
The term sustainability appeared in the academic and business world in the
1970s, at the same time when companies received one of the first wake-up
calls in form of oil shocks. These caused major problems even to long-lived
enterprises. According to a study done by Shell after this disastrous event, an
average life expectancy of a multinational company was around 40 to 50
years. For example, from the 12 companies that created the Dow Jones Index
in 1900 until now, only one survived GE (Visser et al. 2007).
The implementation of sustainability in the value chain can prove to be a
very difficult process. Even though there is a lot of theoretical background,
one can use it to create the basic concept for a company; the application
itself is bound to the characteristics of each company. According to many
studies, the companies fail to implement the necessary changes while
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