Lund University

This paper examines the current trends of corporations that have completed a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability report. To gain an overview of the rapid growth in sustainability reporting the issues and trends that are analyzed are geographic locations of main headquarters, size by number of employees, size by market capitalization, sector breakdown and financial performance. The paper presents a mental model that builds on the theory of competitive advantage by Porter (1980, 1985, 1990). The mental model argues that sustainability can be the crystallization concept to build and retain intellectual capital through the development of stakeholder dialogue, corporate culture, corporate governance and corporate reputation. The paper proposes that the ability of corporations to blend sustainability into the creation of intellectual capital is a dimension that can be added to all three of the generic strategies developed by Porter (1980): low-cost leadership, product/service differentiation and market specialization to achieve competitive advantage. The corporation that can also implement sustainability indicators across what Porter (1980) called the horizontal strategy and both up and down the vertical chain may gain triple-bottom line benefits. These sustainability benefits are the initial steps towards the creation of a learning organization focused towards sustainable development.