Sustainability Perception and Implementation of Islamic Firms: A Research on the Corporate Customers of Islamic Banks

The negative externalities of the capitalist economic paradigm and the problem of irresponsibility in the contemporary financial system have brought the importance and necessity of the concept of sustainability to the world’s agenda. And it has increased the search for a new paradigm sensitive to the social and natural environment to achieve sustainable development. This global trend, in fact, has provided a basis for convergence and adoption of Islamic principles in economics and finance. Islamic economics and finance principles are the guarantee of a production and distribution mechanism that does not make certain societies and future generations to pay the price for development. However, the important question is whether companies that are expected to abide by the principles of Islamic economics have embraced and implemented the concept of sustainability. This study aims to reveal the sustainability perception and implementation of the companies with Islamic sensitivity via an empirical analysis. The sample is selected among the corporate customers of participation banks because it is assumed that such a sample has a representation feature in terms of Islamicity. The findings of the study show that participation bank customer firms have partially integrated sustainability implementations into their own business processes. Among these companies, it is seen that the companies that have foreign partnership structures or have commercial relations with abroad and have more than 50 employees, comply with the sustainability principles significantly more than other companies.