ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Sustainable Organizations
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2025.1648712
Advancing Corporate Sustainability: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Individual and Organizational Drivers
Provisionally accepted
- RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
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As integral societal actors, companies must engage in corporate sustainability to address climate change and remain competitive. While many factors influencing corporate sustainability have been identified, little research has analyzed them jointly. Therefore, this study surveyed corporate sustainability leaders in a mixed-methods approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews (N = 25) and an online survey (N = 108) to assess organizational and individual, leader-related drivers. Qualitative results highlighted the importance of leadership in sustainability decisions. Quantitative results showed that perceived corporate sustainability correlated with individual factors (e.g., leaders' environmental behavior), while practical sustainability, measured by the Corporate Sustainability Index, was linked to organizational factors (e.g., company size). Hierarchical multiple regression quantified the relative impact of factors and confirmed leaders' environmental citizenship behavior, company size, and annual revenue as key sustainability predictors. The findings provide valuable guidance for organizations and policymakers to support corporate sustainability transformation by empowering sustainability leaders and smaller organizations.
Keywords: corporate sustainability, Sustainability leaders, Individual and Organizational Factors, Perceived Sustainability Relevance, Mixed-method approach, Corporate sustainability index
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Keil, Rohowsky, Offermann, Ziefle and Arning. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maike Keil, keil@risk.rwth-aachen.de
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