Managing Sustainability to Be First: The Toyota Case

Sustainability matters along with attention to a company’s social and environmental commitment and the related (complex) performance is far from new in the literature, but the last years have pressed both academics and managers by urgent issues such as climate changes and disasters, poverty, economic and social crisis in many countries, human rights violations, health concerns and so on. Also, the end of twentieth century saw unprecedented changes in corporate strategy and management towards sustainable thinking—the emergence of sustainability as corporate strategy, and making sustainability an integral part of a company’s business strategy in order to gain bottom-line benefits and to accomplish new law requirements. In such a global, unstable, market, sustainability becomes an investable concept, crucial in driving interest and investments to the mutual benefit of companies and investors. Toyota’s commitment for a sustainable management has been developed since decades ago and continues nowadays, representing a perfect example for the whole market, and witnessing the urgency of an integrated approach along the supply chain, in order to gain competitive advantage through ‘sustainability’.