Balancing product and process sustainability against business profitability: sustainability as a competitive strategy in the property development process

This paper explores the activities of two UK-based property development companies that have integrated sustainability into their business models as a source of competitive advantage in response to an evolving public sector sustainability agenda. These companies have combined different individual competencies and developed new routines and business practices that provide them with distinctiveness in the marketplace. These new routines represent entrepreneurial behaviour constructed around the identification of profitable market niches based on values derived from incorporating sustainability into private sector business models. This incorporation requires the development of a framework for balancing sustainability and related value systems against more mainstream concerns with maximizing profitability. This paper identifies this framework and explores the ways in which these firms have developed a discursive formation of profit and value that is used to balance the tensions that exist in a business model formulated around balancing a double bottom line. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.