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Abstract
As a preliminary research of development of a comprehensive management tool for organizational sustainability, this paper discusses the difficulty of achieving organizational sustainability in today's complex business environment. It explains why Analytic Network Process (ANP), a general form of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), is an appropriate approach to the project portfolio management for success in organizational sustainability. It proposes a generic ANP model via the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework for the evaluation and prioritization of projects based on their potential contribution to an organization's sustainability initiative. The paper then demonstrates the model through an illustrative problem.
Keywords
Organizational sustainability, triple bottom line (TBL), analytic network process (ANP), project portfolio management
1. Introduction
In recent years, as environmental problems and their impact on nature, people and economies have become better understood, the term sustainability has developed into a household word. Even so, the term sustainability is somewhat ambiguous. The definition made in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development [1], the economic development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, can be considered as the starting point for the sustainability concept. From an organizational perspective, in 2002 Dyllick and Hockerts [2] define corporate sustainability as meeting the needs of a firm's direct and indirect stakeholders without compromising its ability to meet the needs for future stakeholders. In general, corporate sustainability is defined as a business approach that creates long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks derived from the developments in three sustainability dimensions - economic, environmental and social (i.e., Triple Bottom Line or TBL) [3]. Further, and possibly more important, it is also claimed that organizational sustainability performance is an investable concept that can have a positive effect on society and the economy [3]. Based on these definitions, an organization's sustainability can be improved by investing in the projects that provide the maximum benefits from the potential opportunities of sustainability practices while minimizing or avoiding related costs and risks. To this end, our research focuses on the development of a project portfolio management tool that can be used to improve organizational sustainability. Utilizing the Analytic Network process (ANP) to manage the complexity of sustainability concept, decision...