Sustainability Defined

According to MISQ Call for Papers (2010):

• Sustainability is a complex term that can encompass environmental, economic, and societal issues.
• In essence, sustainability is conservation, deployment, and reuse of resources in responsible ways—a responsibility that is geared toward the triple bottom line. The triple bottom line—people, planet, and profit—view of value creation balances commercial and societal goals in a way that all three Ps are addressed simultaneously rather than being seen as trade-offs or with one goal overriding the other two.

According to Melville (2010):

• An encompassing definition of sustainability is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
  (WCED 1987, p. 43).
• This definition is related to the triple bottom line, a broad conceptualization of organizational performance comprising economic, environmental, and social dimensions (Kleindorfer et al. 2005; Porter and Kramer 2006).

References:

WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our Common Future, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.