This paper proposes a systematic framework for the analysis of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework is based on the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability, which stresses the need for a simultaneous integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions without, a priori, emphasising one over any other. The integrative view presupposes that firms need to accept tensions in corporate sustainability and pursue different sustainability aspects simultaneously even if they seem to contradict each other. The framework proposed in this paper (...) goes beyond the traditional triad of economic, environmental and social dimensions and argues that tensions in corporate sustainability occur between different levels, in change processes and within a temporal and spatial context. The framework provides vital groundwork for managing tensions in corporate sustainability based on paradox strategies. The paper then applies the framework to identify and characterise four selected tensions and illustrates how key approaches from the literature on strategic contradictions, tensions and paradoxes—i.e., acceptance and resolution strategies—can be used to manage these tensions. Thereby, it refines the emerging literature on the integrative view for the management of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework also provides managers with a better understanding of tensions in corporate sustainability and enables them to embrace these tensions in their decision making. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a paradox perspective on corporate sustainability. By explicitly acknowledging tensions between different desirable, yet interdependent and conflicting sustainability objectives, a paradox perspective enables decision makers to achieve competing sustainability objectives simultaneously and creates leeway for superior business contributions to sustainable development. In stark contrast to the business case logic, a paradox perspective does not establish emphasize business considerations over concerns for environmental protection and social well-being at the societal level. In order to (...) contribute to the consolidation of this emergent field of research, we offer a definition of the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability and a framework to delineate its descriptive, instrumental, and normative aspects. This framework clarifies the paradox perspective’s contents and its implications for research and practice. We use the framework to map the contributions to this thematic symposium on paradoxes in sustainability and to propose questions for future research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, (...) we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon. (shrink)

This study investigates the hypothesis that the advantage corporate social performance (CSP) yields in attracting human resources depends on the degree of job choice possessed by the job seeking population. Results indicate that organizational CSP is positively related to employer attractiveness for job seekers with high levels of job choice but not related for populations with low levels suggesting advantages to firms with high levels of CSP in the ability to attract the most qualified employees.

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe (...) the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business. (shrink)

In the field of business and society, several complementary frameworks appear to be in competition for preeminence. Although debatable, the primary contenders appear to include (a) corporate social responsibility, (b) business ethics, (c) stakeholder management, (d) sustainability, and (e) corporate citizenship. Despite the prevalence of the five frameworks, difficulties remain in understanding what each construct really means, or should mean, and how each might relate to the others. To address the confusion, the authors propose three core concepts—value, balance, and accountability—that (...) might be used to better integrate the five frameworks and potentially provide the basis for further discussion and theoretical development of the business and society field. (shrink)

Research on employees’ responses to corporate social responsibility has recently accelerated and begun appearing in top-tier academic journals. However, existing findings are still largely fragmented, and this stream of research lacks theoretical consolidation. This article integrates the diffuse and multi-disciplinary literature on CSR micro-level influences in a theoretically driven conceptual framework that contributes to explain and predict when, why, and how employees might react to CSR activity in a way that influences organizations’ economic and social performance. Drawing on social identity (...) theory and social exchange theory, we delineate the different but interdependent psychological mechanisms that explain how CSR can strengthen the employee–organization relationship and subsequently foster employee-related, micro-level outcomes. Contributions of our framework to extant literature and potential extensions for future research are then discussed. (shrink)

Do firms benefit from their voluntary efforts to alleviate the many problems confronting society? A vast literature establishing a “business case” for corporate social responsibility appears to find that usually they do. However, as argued herein, the business case literature has established only that firms usually benefit from responding to the demands of their primary stakeholders. The nature of the relationship between the interests of business and those of broader society, beyond a subset of powerful primary stakeholders, remains an open (...) question despite this vast literature. This article develops a set of propositions that highlight constraints on firms’ ability to profit from CSR and outlines a set of managerial challenges on which researchers must focus their attention to truly determine whether and when firms can profit by responding to the needs of society. (shrink)

Research on employees’ responses to corporate social responsibility has recently accelerated and begun appearing in top-tier academic journals. However, existing findings are still largely fragmented, and this stream of research lacks theoretical consolidation. This article integrates the diffuse and multi-disciplinary literature on CSR micro-level influences in a theoretically driven conceptual framework that contributes to explain and predict when, why, and how employees might react to CSR activity in a way that influences organizations’ economic and social performance. Drawing on social identity (...) theory and social exchange theory, we delineate the different but interdependent psychological mechanisms that explain how CSR can strengthen the employee–organization relationship and subsequently foster employee-related, micro-level outcomes. Contributions of our framework to extant literature and potential extensions for future research are then discussed. (shrink)

Scholars are divided over the question of whether managerial aspirational talk that contradicts current business practices can contribute to corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this conceptual article, we explore the rhetorical dynamics of aspirational talk that either impede or foster CSR. We argue that self-persuasive CSR rhetoric, as one enactment of aspirational talk, can attract attention and scrutiny from organizational members. Continued adherence to this rhetoric, however, creates and perpetuates tensions that lead to a vicious circle of disengagement. A virtuous (...) circle, by contrast, requires a shift toward an agonistic rhetoric that transcends tensions by rearticulating aspirations in concurrence with situated understandings of responsible corporate practice. Our arguments contribute to a better understanding of how communication becomes constitutive of CSR and address the debate on decoupling between talk and action. (shrink)

Both sustainability and identity are said to be paradoxical issues in organizations. In this study we look at the paradoxes of corporate sustainability at the individual level by studying the identity work of those managers who hold sustainability-dedicated roles in organizations. Analysing 26 interviews with sustainability managers, we identify three main tensions affecting their identity construction process: the business versus values oriented, the organizational insider versus outsider and the short-term versus long-term focused identity work tensions. When dealing with these tensions, (...) some interviewees express a paradoxical perspective in attempting to accept and maintain the two poles of each of them simultaneously. It emerges in particular that metaphorical reasoning can be used by sustainability managers in varied ways to cope with the tensions of identity work. We read these findings in light of the existing literature on the relation between paradoxes and identity work, highlighting and discussing their implications for both research and practice. (shrink)

Existing research posits that decision makers use specific cognitive frames to manage tensions in sustainability. However, we know less about how the cognitive frames of individuals at different levels in organization interact and what these interactions imply for managing sustainability tensions, such as in Bottom of the Pyramid projects. To address this omission, we ask do organizational and project leaders differ in their understanding of tensions in a BOP project, and if so, how? We answer this question by drawing on (...) a 5-year study of a BOP project of a global pharmaceutical company in India. In line with the existing research, we found three kinds of frames—paradoxical, business case, and business—held differently across organizational levels and over time. We also found that the shift in frames of both project and organizational leaders was mediated by the decision-making horizon. The initial divergence across organizational levels, seen in paradoxical and business frames, was mediated by long-term decision-making horizon. However, there was an eventual convergence toward business frames associated with the shift from long- to shorter-term decision-making horizons and one that led to the project’s closure. We contribute by proposing a dynamic model of cognitive frames in sustainability, where the research has either alluded to top-down or bottom-up understanding. (shrink)

The majority of studies on absorptive capacity (AC) underscore the importance of absorbing technological knowledge from other firms to create economic value. However, to preserve moral legitimacy and create social value, firms must also discern and adapt to (shifts in) societal values. A comparative case study of eight firms in the food industry reveals how organizations prioritize and operationalize the societal value health in product innovation while navigating inter- and intravalue conflicts. The value-sensitive framework induced in this article extends AC (...) by explaining how technically savvy, economic value–creating firms diverge in their receptivity, articulation, and reflexivity of societal values. (shrink)

This paper investigates the difficulties of creating economic, social, and environmental values when operating as a hybrid venture. Drawing on hybrid organizing and sustainable business model research, it explores the implications of alternative forms of business model experimented with by farmer owned, fairtrade social enterprise Cafédirect. Responding to changes and challenges in the market and societal environment, Cafédirect has tried multiple business model innovations to deliver on all three forms of value capture, with differing levels of success. This longitudinal case (...) study, therefore, provides a contribution to our understanding of how business models enact hybrid mission, providing a platform for triple-bottom-line value capture. In doing so, we are able to expand on the normative understandings of integrating hybrid objectives, and the complications of multiple types of value capture. (shrink)

Heeding the call for a deeper understanding of how cross-sector social partnerships can be managed across different contexts, this article integrates ideas from institutional theory with current debate on cross-boundary collaboration. Adopting the point of view of business actors interested in forming a CSSP to address complex social problems, we suggest that “appropriateness” needs shape business approaches toward partnering for social change, exerting an impact on the benefits that can be gained from it. A theoretical framework is proposed that identifies (...) and frames four CSSP styles, as resulting from combinations of dominant institutional orientations in a field and its general level of coherence. We show how, depending on prevailing institutional logics, intervention models underlying the CSSP have to emphasize either the business soundness of the initiative or its social value, together with a consistent leadership style. Moreover, while directive approaches based on concentrated governance structures aimed at setting the rules of the game are shown to prevail in fields characterized by low level of institutional coherence, participative models emerge in more established fields, with CSSP’s promoter playing an integrative role through distributed governance structures. The article concludes with a summary and implications of an institutional-based view of CSSPs. (shrink)

This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social–business tensions. Our empirical case is “impact sourcing”—hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations—“community-focused” and “client-focused” growth—their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. (...) Both growth orientations address social–business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints that manifest when entrepreneurial aspirations conflict with the current growth path. In presenting and discussing our findings, we introduce preempting management practices of tensions, and the importance of geographic embeddedness and distance to the paradox literature. (shrink)

The first United Nations Millennium Development Goal calls for a distinct reduction of worldwide poverty. It is now widely accepted that the private sector is a crucial partner in achieving this ambitious target. Building on this insight, the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ concept provides a framework that highlights the untapped opportunities with the ‹poorest of the poor’, while at the same time acknowledging the abilities and resources of private enterprises for poverty alleviation. This article connects the idea of business with (...) the poor to sustainable development and especially to the notions of inter- and intragenerational justice. These principles of justice can be linked with the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ approach directly through the Rawlsian principles to foster holistic thinking. On this basis, the article offers a normative-ethical reasoning of corporations’ possible responsibilities for the poorest of the poor. Today’s state of worldwide inequalities is likely to generate future tensions between the privileged western world and the uncounted mass of poor (let alone the ethical dubiousness of this status). However, it is at the same time problematic if not even impossible to improve the situation of the poor by simply copying the resource intensive western way of living to the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ due to the limited carrying capacity of the earth. After highlighting possible moral dilemmas which may occur through such a potential trade off, this article concludes with an outlook on how the concepts ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ and sustainable development could be combined. (shrink)

This study examines how the leading beverage company handles the strategic paradox between its core business and the social issue of obesity. A discursive analysis reveals how the organization does embrace a social goal related to obesity but not the paradoxical tension between this goal and its core business. The analysis further shows how the tension, along with the responsibility for the social goal, is projected outside the organization. This response is underpinned by the paradoxical constructions of consumers and the (...) concept of obesity in the organization’s communication. Based on these findings, I outline a new type of process for projection, one of the defensive mechanisms recognized in the literature. The findings increase our understanding of defensive responses to organizational paradoxes and help distinguish between different kinds of strategic paradoxes. They also highlight the need to further open up the complexity and multiplicity of strategic paradoxes related to corporate sustainability. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability introduces multiple tensions or paradoxes into organisations which defy traditional approaches such as trading-off contrasting options. We examine an alternative approach: to manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens where contradictory elements are managed concurrently. Drawing on paradox theory, we focus on two specific pathways: to the organisation-wide acceptance of paradox and to paradoxical resolution. Introducing the concept of strategic agility, we argue that strategically agile organisations are better placed to navigate these paradox pathways. Strategic agility comprises three (...) organisational meta-capabilities: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment, and resource fluidity. We propose that strategically agile organisations draw on strategic sensitivity and collective commitment to achieve organisation-wide acceptance of paradox, and collective commitment and resource fluidity to achieve paradoxical resolution. For each of these meta-capabilities, we identify three organisational practices and processes specifically related to corporate sustainability that organisations can leverage in pursuit of strategic agility. We offer a conceptual framework depicting the strategic agility meta-capabilities, and associated practices and processes, which organisations draw on to successfully manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens. (shrink)

Many challenges to economic and social well-being require close collaboration between business, government, and civil-society actors. In this context, the involvement of multiple companies rather than a single company may enhance such cross-sector social partnerships’ outcomes. However, extant literature cautions about the tensions arising from companies’ competitive interests and the detrimental effects on the CSSP’s social outcome. Similarly, studies analyzing simultaneous collaboration and competition suggest shielding off competitive elements from the collaboration. Based on insights into two multi-company CSSPs, we conversely (...) find that government and NGO partnership managers deliberately leveraged competition through the CSSP design. They used similar segmentation mechanisms to enhance CSSP contributions, but differed in the way they integrated collaborative and competitive elements, leading to sustained corporate commitment in one CSSP and unmet promises in the other. These insights expose the paradoxical nature of coopetition at the interface of social and economic goals, and advance current research by indicating competition’s positive effects and the respective partnership design implications. On this basis, our study helps reveal and better understand sustainability-related tensions and opportunities at the inter-organizational level. (shrink)

Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results of (...) our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures. (shrink)

The notion of shared value presents business with a challenge: to generate social benefit and profit simultaneously. This challenge involves resolving tensions/paradoxes inherent when integrating the apparent contradictory elements of social and economic values. Unfortunately, resolving such tensions is difficult due to the habitual, automatic nature of sensemaking. This paper offers a mechanism whereby individuals can, over time, begin to overcome habitual sensemaking and potentially resolve tensions inherent in shared value. The mechanism is labeled inner knowledge creation. IKC is described (...) and its role in creating shared value for businesses is illustrated through a conceptual model. The model shows how IKC develops metacognitive capabilities, builds capacities to resolve tensions/paradoxes, and cultivates openness to others’ perspectives. (shrink)

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (shrink)

While corporate social responsibility is recognized as taking on various national meanings and practices, research has not sufficiently investigated how multinational companies simultaneously achieve global CSR integration and local CSR adaptation. Building on a qualitative case study carried out at ASICS, an MNC headquartered in Japan, we show how this organizational dilemma may be solved through hybridization work, a form of institutional work performed by CSR managers in subsidiaries to combine and adapt different institutional approaches to CSR. By developing the (...) notion of hybridization work, we contribute by revealing a set of practices that contribute to institutional change within organizations and enriching the study of CSR organizational change and international business by showing how hybridization Work leads to a greater organizational integration between core and periphery, and by identifying the triggering factors for subsidiary initiative in CSR. (shrink)

Prior research flags the inherent incompatibilities between for-profit and nonprofit partners and cautions that clashing value creation logics and conflicting identities can stall social innovation in cross sector partnerships. Process narratives of successful versus unsuccessful cross sector partnerships paint a more optimistic picture, whereby the frequency, intensity, breadth, and depth of interactions may afford frame alignment despite partners' divergent value creation approaches. However, little is known about how cross sector partners come to recognize and reconcile their divergent value creation frames (...) in order to co-construct social value. Using longitudinal narratives of four dyads, we show that partners initially contrast their sector-embedded diagnostic frames and then work together to deliberately develop partnership-specific prognostic frames. We extend the literature on framing by developing a four-stage grounded model of frame negotiation, elasticity, plasticity, and fusion which unpacks the relational process of value creation in cross sector partnerships. Our qualitative analyses further show how partners orchestrate multilevel coordination that helps scaffold and calibrate this relational process of frame fusion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Firms face a variety of institutional logics and one important question is how individuals within firms manage these logics. Environmental managers in particular face tensions in reconciling their firms’ commercial fortunes with demands for greater environmental responsiveness. We explore how institutional work enables environmental managers to respond to competing institutional logics. Drawing on repeated interviews with 55 firms, we find that environmental managers face competition between a market-based logic and an emerging environmental logic. We show that some environmental managers embed (...) the environmental logic alongside the market logic through variations of creation and disruption, thus over time creating institutional change, which can result in blended logics. Others, however, pursue a strategy of status quo or disengagement through maintenance or other forms of disruption, where the two logics coexist in principle but not in practice; instead the market logic retains its dominance. We discuss the implications of our findings for research. (shrink)

We argue that the majority of the current approaches in research on corporate sustainability are inconsistent with the notion of sustainable development. By defining the notion of instrumentality in the context of corporate sustainability through three conceptual principles we show that current approaches are rooted in a bounded notion of instrumentality which establishes a systematic a priori predominance of economic organizational outcomes over environmental and social aspects. We propose an inclusive notion of profitability that reflects the return on all forms (...) of environmental, social, and economic capital used by a firm. This inclusive notion of corporate profitability helps to redefine corporate profitability as if sustainability matters in that it overcomes the bounded instrumentality that impairs current research on corporate sustainability. We apply this notion to different car manufacturers and develop conceptual implications for future research on corporate sustainability. (shrink)

This article analyses the link between innovation with high social benefits and corporate social performance (CSP) and the role that family firms play in this. This theme is particularly relevant given the large number of firms that are family-owned. Also the implicit potential of innovation to reconcile corporate sustainability aspects with profitability justifies an extended analysis of this link. Governments often support socially beneficial innovation with various policy instruments, with the intention of increasing international competitiveness and simultaneously supporting sustainable development. (...) In parallel, firms pursue corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental management activities partly in the hope that this will foster such innovation in their organisation (alongside their main aim of improving CSP). Hence, the main research question of this article is about the association of CSP with innovation with high social benefits and the determinants of the potential moderation of this association. Based on panel data, the article analyses the link between CSP and innovation, and the effect of being a family firm using panel estimation techniques. The results point to a moderating role of family firms on the link between innovation with high social benefits and CSP. The article concludes by assessing the policy implications of this insight. (shrink)

The link between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and financial performance has continued to generate mixed and inconclusive results. Most studies in this area seem to assume that corporate social and financial performance share the same underpinning logic. Drawing from a qualitative analysis of practitioners' accounts of the challenges of mainstreaming the market for responsible investments, as part of the broader CSR agenda, this article re-examines this taken-for-granted assumption in the extant literature, and reaches the conclusion that CSR, as a complex (...) private governance of externalities, does not easily lend itself to measurability and profitability. In other words, not everything about CSR is measurable and profitable as much as the financial markets would expect. Comparing what is rendered measurable and profitable, on one hand, and what is yet to fully lend itself to measurability and profitability, on the other, is identified as one of the fundamental flaws of this literature. As such, CSR and financial performance will continue to run on competing logics until their different markets are distinctively articulated and/or aligned. (shrink)