Critical sustainability indicators identification and cause-effect relationships analysis for sustainable organization strategy based on fuzzy DEMATEL

Abstract

Traditionally, there was a common belief that the main role of successful organizations, especially in business, was to make profit. However, over the past decades, this belief proved to be wrong, since many organizations that had been making a lot of profit went bankrupt, while others persisted, and the main reasons were their adaptability and sustainability. In this research, we wanted to find out the indicators on the strategy level that leaders should take into account in order to make their organization sustainable in the most adaptive way. Our research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, we handpicked 150 indicators and conducted a survey where decision makers were asked to rank them. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation were used on the chosen data to find if there was any correlation between the indicators and if they formed any groups. It was found that there were eight perspectives which described 69.38% of the entire sample. Therefore, we chose the indicators that best represented the perspectives. In the second phase, Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (Fuzzy DEMATEL) was used to calculate if there were any cause-effect relationships between the indicators. The results show that in order to have a sustainable strategy, organizations need to consider eight perspectives, where the biggest weight belongs to the perspective of Learning. The perspective of Leadership is the second, and Finance perspective has the lowest weight. In conclusion, it is pointed out that the survival of organizations depends on their ability to learn, adapt to changes, and be more sustainable.