The Financial Stability Of Sustainable Organisations

Abstract

Research by Avery and Bergsteiner (2010) has found that Honeybee organisations, those that practice the principles of Sustainable Leadership, tend to perform better financially than those purely focused on generating profit. Financial analysis applies the concept of risk to adjust returns for the risks the organisations were exposed to in order to achieve the returns. This study applied the idea of stability, being the opposite of volatility, to evaluate the financial performance of three pairs of comparable organisations that operate in different industry sectors where each pair consists of a sustainable and a non-sustainable organisation as defined by DJSI index membership in 2010. In order to obtain a complete picture a mixture of internal and external financial measures was considered. This preliminary study found that sustainable organisations are more financially stable and maintain a lower risk profile.