Abstract:
Construction industry is a booming industry worldwide and achieving sustainability in
the construction industry has become a vital ambition. Nowadays, the concept of
sustainability with its triple bottom line meaning is being adopted more and more by
corporations and concerning construction trade, sustainability is about achieving a winwin
output. Cement organisations’ business is a crucial sub-segment of the construction
industry. Apart from the frequent monetary benefits from the cement organisations, it is
increasingly linked to various unethical business practices form numerous challenges
that threaten sustainability in cement industry. Thus, in the direction to achieve
corporate sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was recognized as an
effective tool. Sri Lankan cement manufacturing and supplying organizations usually
publish details about CSR practices of the philanthropic, business environment and
business process in their annual business reports. Therefore, this qualitative study based
on five in-depth interviews focused on identifying the Sri Lankan cement companies’ gap
between their current practice and required practice of CSR within their business
process. The results found could be categorised under three main sectors as CSR
through philanthropic activities, CSR related to business environment and CSR related
to business process. It was found that; Sri Lankan cement organizations’ CSR practices
related to philanthropic and business environment were at highest level. Even though
there is a significant lacking point in the current practices of CSR linked to the business
process and application of sustainable innovations for cement organisations’ business
process to achieve corporate sustainability.
