A multivariate quantitative approach for sustainability performance assessment: An upstream oil and gas company

This paper presents a quantitative approach to evaluate the sustainability performance (SP) of an organization. A methodology is proposed based on principal component analysis (PCA), numerical taxonomy (NT), statistical, and cluster analysis. Related factors are determined considering sustainability dimensions, including social, economic, and environmental ones. A unique procedure is presented to commensurate the monetary factors. PCA is developed for multivariate analysis, which can rank annual records and determine factors' importance degree. NT is developed to verify and validate the results of PCA. The multivariate approach is able to rank the alternatives and simultaneously determine the importance degree of factors. An upstream oil and gas company is given as a case study. The statistical analysis showed direct relationships between the results of different analyses. In addition, the factors are categorized into two and four partitions to reduce dimensionality. The outcome-related factors are found to be of great importance for organizational SP. Furthermore, a descending SP in recent years was identified. To improve potential SP, operational planning for enhancing the performance of personnel is recommended. This paper provides intuition on the clusters obtained and why these factors affect the organizations' performance. The approach of this paper can be utilized for managers in the other industrial sectors who have access to company performance data and wish to analyze which factors are vital for company performance or hurting the company performance using the methodology presented in this paper.