Sustainability Practices, Drivers and Barriers : A New Zealand/India Comparison

Growing awareness of global environment and social problems has led to non-financial parameters becoming an important source of providing a competitive edge to the organizations, and thus to ensure business sustainability. Business sustainability is often referred to as the process whereby the companies strive to manage the triple bottom line- financial, social, and environmental risks and opportunities. In the backdrop of this, the present study builds on a longitudinal study of business sustainability practices in New Zealand, and further extends this to a sample of companies in India to facilitate a cross-country comparison. The study thus aims at identifying and analyzing the levels of various drivers and barriers to sustainability practices both in India and New Zealand. The study reveals that in both the countries, the surveyed companies are more engaged in social rather than environmental sustainability. In the case of for Indian companies, while Government regulation was reported as the key driver, in New Zealand, reputation and brand were found to be the key drivers for business sustainability