Chief Sustainability Officers: The Role Organizations’ Top Management Teams Have on Triple Bottom Line Performance

Research and development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies indicate that a company’s focus on the triple bottom line will foster innovation, profit, and stakeholder support. The purpose of this comparative study will provide an in-depth perspective on how corporations and businesses are managing the demands associated with meeting triple bottom line goals and objectives. Specifically, within top management teams, this study looks further into the impacts of the executive position, Chief Sustainability Officer, whose focus is sustainability, and to determine their impact on triple bottom line performance.

“As with every SMGT class, the capstone was no different in pushing me past a threshold I did not think I could overcome. Between working full time, caring for my family and household, and completing my degree, it has been a constant uphill battle. But a battle that has primed me to be the person I am today; and I could not be any more confident to take on the professional world. Specially, from the Capstone experience, I learned the importance of setting yourself up for success by putting the hard work in from the beginning to ensure a smooth transition into the finish. From the guidance of the Capstone course, I diligently researched and established an outline right at the start. Which made the development and writing of my paper a smooth process throughout the semester as I pulled from and adjusted my outline. Which also helped with not getting lost in my project and with staying on track with the ideas I wanted to portray. This has translated into the projects I currently work on at my job and will continue to assist me as my “work team”, and myself, develop our goals for the new year. The Capstone experience also assisted me with my decision on what I wanted to do upon the completion and retrieval of my degree. The decision being something that I had struggled with throughout my SMGT career because of the multitude of career paths I could choose. By being able to research a future career path for the Capstone project, it provided an outlet to work though my thought process that I did not realize I needed. Now, I have confidently decided to stay with my current employer and to take on the additional role of sustainability advocate. With the goal of evolving and developing the company’s sustainability initiatives to move them through the stages of sustainability to reach a point were denoting a CSO is feasible. All in all, the Capstone experience was a great cherry on top to the experiences I had thus far in completing the SMGT major. Just when I thought I had overcome all the obstacles that there are to college, the Capstone managed to push me to the next notch that I did not even know existed. I am thankful for the experience and the confidence that completing a project such as this has given me to move into the next stage of my professional career.”