Can businesses move beyond efficiency? The shift toward effectiveness and equity in the corporate sustainability debate

The aim of this paper is to articulate to a wider practitioner and academic audience the value and importance of moving the sustainable business agenda beyond the notion of eco and socio efficiency. This in and off itself is not a new development in the sustainable business literature. What are emerging are integrated models of corporate sustainability that links together the six criteria that a sustainable business will need to satisfy, namely eco-efficiency, socio-efficiency, eco-effectiveness, socio-effectiveness, sufficiency and ecological equity. At this stage these new models of corporate sustainability need further theoretical development taking corporate sustainability beyond the business case (eco-efficiency) towards an integrated approach that links in the social and natural case. A new model for sustainable entrepreneurship is presented and discussed in the context of a social entrepreneur case study.