Organization & Environment 1–20 © 2016 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1086026616645381 oae.sagepub.com Article How Sustainability Is Reflected in the S&P 500 Companies’ Strategic Documents Nabin Baral 1 and Mohan P. Pokharel 2 Abstract This study’s goal was to analyze the contents of the S&P 500 companies’ mission, vision, and values statements to measure the extent to which they reflect the concept of sustainability. Data were collected from public domains (reports and websites) between April and June, 2013. Using inductive methods, we assessed corporations to reflect sustainability when their stated goal was not only to generate profits but also to care about people and the planet. The theme “generating the profit” emerged in 69.2% of the companies, while other themes of “caring for the people” and “safeguarding the planet” appeared respectively in 34.0% and 14.8% of the companies. About 12.0% of the companies had the triple bottom line (profit, people, and planet themes) in their strategic documents. Logistic regressions showed a sectoral difference in the emergence of profit, people, and planet themes. These findings are expected to instigate a healthy debate on sustainability. Keywords corporate sustainability, mission statement, natural environment, S&P 500, triple bottom line Introduction Conventional wisdom dictates business firms maximize profits, but how can they thrive without addressing social and environmental issues in the 21st century? Milton Friedman (1970) argued that the one and only social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits by engaging in the competitive free market within the scope of law and regulations. In this neoclassical economic model of firms, even if environmental or social issues are addressed, the purpose of doing so is to further business self-interests such as complying with regulations, incorporating stakeholders’ pressure, or retaining organizational legitimacy (Bansal & Roth, 2000; J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Mirvis, Bradley, & Kinnicutt, 2010; Molnar & Mulvihill, 2003). In the past, business sur- vival strategy was almost entirely focused on the creation of economic value (Porter, 1980; Porter & Kramer, 2006). This strategy is inadequate if customers also demand quality and value in addi- tion to competitive prices, if employees are not motivated only by a paycheck, and if communities demand firms to be good corporate citizens (Turban & Greening, 1997). In such a context, firms’ 1 University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA 2 Concord University, Athens, WV, USA Corresponding Author: Mohan P. Pokharel, The Division of Business, Concord University, 1000 Vermilion St, Athens, WV 24712, USA. Email: mpokharel@concord.edu 645381OAE XX X 10.1177/1086026616645381Organization & EnvironmentBaral and Pokharel research-article 2016