Proceedings of Annual Tokyo Business Research Conference
15 - 16 December 2014, Waseda University, Tokyo, japan, ISBN: 978-1-922069-67-2
Business Sustainability Initiatives and Their Integration into
Corporate Strategy - A Malaysian Perspective
Lau Chee Kwong
There has been continuous growth in the area of sustainability reporting globally, and in the ASEAN
region. This growth is in part due to firms attempting to address the ever evolving relationship
between businesses and its stakeholders over the decade which has given rise to a variety of
ethical, economic, social, and even environmental challenges (ACCA, 2010; Carroll and Bucholtz,
2014). However, not many firms were found to have an integrated strategy which is aligned with
organisational goals (Lopez et al., 2007; PwC, 2013). The Malaysia Stock Exchange has been
promoting business sustainability initiatives (BSI) with the introduction of a CSR framework in 2006
and its further repositioning to a business sustainability framework in 2010. The purpose of this
study is to examine how the Malaysian public listed firms have integrated business sustainability
initiatives into their strategic management process.
In order to be able to determine the constructs and strategic integration of BSI, both contemporary
and conventional literatures as well as industry practitioner views were considered to derive a
comprehensive BSI framework. With this, the annual and sustainability reports of the top 100
Malaysia listed firms were analysed by means of content analysis to examine for evidence of
strategic sustainability integration in these firms. This study observes that Malaysian firms do
indeed have varying levels of understanding with regards to business sustainability and this can be
seen in both the level of strategic sustainability integration within Malaysian firms as well as the
varying levels of disclosures between the business sustainability dimensions. This study also finds
that larger firms as well as firms with standalone sustainability reporting outperform smaller firms
and firms which do not issue standalone sustainability reporting respectively in the areas of the
implementation, communication and integration of business sustainability.
Keywords: Business Sustainability Initiatives, Strategic Integration
Track of Research: Management, Strategic Management
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Dr. Lau Chee Kwong *Corresponding author, laucheekwong@gmail.com or lau.cheekwong@nottingham.edu.my
Mr. Stephen Lew Joo Wei, Nottingham University Business School, The University of Nottingham Malaysia
Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Tel: +60389248283 Fax:
+60389248019