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The purpose of this paper is to discuss what the business contribution to sustainable development is (or should be) and to propose criteria for assessing corporate sustainability. These criteria are applied for the analysis of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)‐reports of five major cement manufacturers. This will result in a discussion if GRI‐based sustainability reports really contain the information needed for judging corporate sustainability.

Starting from a literature review of common definitions and principles, the main criteria of corporate sustainability were developed and a set of evaluation criteria for analyzing sustainability reports was proposed. Definitions and principles from concepts such as eco‐efficiency, triple‐bottom‐line, the natural step and stakeholder value were considered. Using these criteria analysis was made of the GRI‐based sustainability reports of five major cement manufacturers in order to find out to what extent the reports really address the sustainability performance of the companies. The companies were chosen because of their dominant position in the building material supply chain. The building industry has multiple impacts on the environment as well as on the social system. The decisions and actions of the cement manufacturers have influence on the entire supply chain, from raw material suppliers to the end customer.

The findings lead to the conclusion that the current GRI guidelines are not sufficient to make sustainability reporting for the cement industry relevant and clear. In other words, the guidelines are not sufficient for assuring that a report answers the questions of how sustainable a company is and how quickly it is approaching sustainability. Within the GRI guidelines the needs of the customers are not considered sufficiently. This points at an important area where business excellence ideas can support sustainability reporting. This could be done, for instance, by including the concept of cost of poor quality into sustainability reporting guidelines.

The most common framework for sustainability reporting on an empirical basis was critically analysed. The qualitative study delivers insights into sustainability reporting in an industry with large impacts on global climate change and living conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a holistic model for reviewing business excellence (BE) concepts from a systemic perspective and to propose an implementation guideline intending to fill the gap between theory and practice of systems thinking in quality management.

The research is an exploratory investigation into the business excellence implementation based on systems thinking. After an exhaustive review of literature about BE implementation frameworks, critical barriers and success factors, system‐based integration models and change management models, a methodology was developed which describes the process of designing and implementing a sustainable BE.

The outcome of this research is a roadmap of BE implementation for sustaining organizational excellence obtained from a meta‐model proposed in this study.

The findings of this study are relevant to all different sized organizations, in different sectors and industries, for managing dynamic and complex processes in order to guarantee a sustainable BE.

The paper presents a unique roadmap for implementing BE in the light of systems thinking; such a roadmap has not been addressed in previous publications. When used properly, this roadmap can direct organizations toward sustainable excellence.