Measuring the Sustainability Performance of the Forgotten Ones -- A Suggested Framework for Fashion Micro Enterprises Validated by a Delphi Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5890/JEAM.2027.03.004Abstract
Despite existing frameworks and increasing stakeholder and regulatory expectations, micro enterprises in the fashion sector, especially in the business-to-consumer field, still seem to be neglected in terms of sustainability performance assessment. To contribute to fill this gap, this study aims at developing a sustainability performance self-evaluation framework meeting the specific needs of micro enterprises in the fashion sector. A three round Delphi study (novel in this context) is applied to validate and refine it, involving 16 experts of various backgrounds. Based on the validation process along four success factors (relevance, simple interpretability, own impact and data availability), expert consensus supports the refined framework (including 50 sample indicators along 9 aspects within environmental, social and citizenship categories) meeting the special needs of the target group. Both the suggested framework and the validation method (Delphi study) are novel in the context (micro- and small enterprises in the fashion sector). Results contribute to the development of the sustainability performance evaluation of micro-enterprises in the fashion sector and imply That the proposed framework can be useful both for the target group in practice and for the broader society.References
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