Abstract
In this paper I argue that the assessment and management of corporate sustainability potentially runs the risk of severe biases due to the application of inadequate criteria. Firstly, present praxis as well as theory of corporate sustainability assessment tend to not distinguish between structural and performance related features relevant for corporate sustainability. Secondly, the nature of corporate sustain-ability as the result of a constructive process of complexity reduction performed by social systems, which is highly context-specific, selective, and ambiguous, is ignored. Considering these two features as well as their interactions is described as one step towards rendering theorizing about and management of corporate sustainability able to adequately take into account the immense increase of complexity the adherence to the goal of corporate sustainability represents.
Schneider, Anselm