Mapping Corporate Sustainability Approaches and Facilitating Organisational Change. An in-depth case study to reveal discrepancies between theory and practice.

Abstract

Growing awareness about social and environmental externalities has prompted companies to take action to foster their corporate sustainability performance. When doing so, however, they face an enormous amount of information on approaches to corporate sustainability, how to strategize for it and how to implement it. These are provided by actors on all levels, from the academic sector as well as the private sector, in form of consultancies. This research aims to connect key elements of corporate sustainability approaches to strategy implementation, with a particular focus on change management, in order to increase the understanding how all these processes can be utilized to improve sustainability performance. For this a literature review on corporate sustainability management, organisational culture and change management, as well as corporate sustainability approaches, will serve as an integrated background on the topic. Moreover, a methodology will be developed that allows for a mapping and thus clearer characterisation of corporate sustainability approaches (MoCSAs). The theory streams and their integration are essential to develop a systems view understanding of what is happening at a company, when corporate sustainability approaches are implemented. The integrated theories will thus be applied to a company, which was studied in depth over an extensive time period, to detect the supporting conditions, challenges and ‘current state - intention gaps’ that are influencing the corporate sustainability performance and strategy development. The case analysis will show that the different streams of theory are relevant for the corporate sustainability implementation process and that their integration can contribute to the understanding of such. It thus calls for further development of integrated theories and their application to case studies that can enable a better understanding in both the academic as well as corporate world of how corporate sustainability can and does take form.